Newsletter August 2023
Something Big is Coming Early July!
Usha Uthup is BACK with a brand new volume of the ever-popular Karadi Rhymes series! Join her for our launch of Karadi Rhymes 3 on July 4th, 2020, at 5:30PM on the Karadi Tales facebook page.
Meanwhile, Pre-order your Digital Copy!
Pre-order before July 4th, 2020 and get 10% off your order! You could also be in for a chance to win a Rs.1000 voucher, redeemable at karaditales.com! Pre-order here.
The Neev Book Award Shortlists are in!
The Mountains of Mumbai was shortlisted in the “Picture Book” category, and Letters to Ammi was shortlisted in the “Emerging Readers” category!
The winners will be announced at the Neev Literature Festival later this year.
Recognition from Around the World
“Descriptive language introduces children to onomatopoeia. Farmer Falgu’s resourcefulness in turning his ruined cargo of goods into delicious omelets is a clever take on the moral: how to make lemonade out of lemons. With bold, vivid illustrations, this positive, upbeat, and funny story would be a joyful book to read aloud online to children.”
– Children’s Literature Assembly on Farmer Falgu Goes to the Market.
5 stars
“The illustrations provided by Priya Kuriyan are bright and colorful and the facial expressions of the humans and the animals will be entertaining for young children. Also, there is a list in the back of the book that offers several boredom busters for children with just about any interest–reading, music, crafts, physical activities, and games.”
“The illustrations provided by Priya Kuriyan are bright and colorful and the facial expressions of the humans and the animals will be entertaining for young children. Also, there is a list in the back of the book that offers several boredom busters for children with just about any interest–reading, music, crafts, physical activities, and games.”
– Youth Services Book Review on Princess Easy Pleasy is Bored.
Highly Commended by SABA
Adding to the long list of accolades Thukpa For All and The Clever Tailor have received, both books were recently listed as Highly Commended books by the South Asia Book Award 2020.
The South Asia Book Award aims to highlight outstanding books for children and teens that portray South Asians. According to their website, they wish to “encourage and commend authors and publishers who produce such books, and to provide teachers with recommendations for classroom use.”
IT WAS KARADI’S BIRTHDAY!
Twenty four years ago, in June of 1996, Karadi Tales was born – what an incredible journey it has been since then!
The current pandemic and lockdown did not stop us from celebrating together as a company – a two hour Zoom party consisting of talent shows, anecdotes, and lots of reminiscing, was held on Karadi’s birthday – 27th June.
A Brand New Online Series for the Lockdown Days
We had two seasons of Kala with Karadi in June, both conducted by two of our illustrators – the first being with Chetan Sharma, a 5-day drawing workshop where he taught children how to draw various animals, and the second with Malavika P C, a 3-day craft workshop where she taught the kids to make sea creatures from just paper.
Learning Workshops
In Goa, where Karadi Path is implemented in 200 schools, two-day trainings were conducted in three batches on 24th, 25th, 26th, and 27th of June 2020. Around 215 HMs and teachers from 100 schools attended the online training sessions.
For Magic English Vaachan, an initiative supported by NSEF, implemented in 100 (Phase 1) ZP Schools in Nandurbar district, teachers’ orientation is scheduled from 22nd June 2020 to 7th July 2020. So far, the training has been given to 193 teachers from 48 schools in the district. In Maharashtra where Karadi Path is implemented in 393 schools, a total of 246 manual study sessions have been conducted so far. There were 962 teachers from 210 schools covered in these sessions.
Since Karadi Path Magic English-SLL requires the teachers to be trained and accredited in the principles of pedagogy, regular trainings and workshops would be offered to the teachers from the schools implementing the programme. The objective of the workshop is to offer refresher training to the Karadi Path approach which also includes manual studies, demo sessions, practice of modules.
Also, in continuation to the teachers connect, the Tamil Nadu team under the “Joyful English” programme initiated “Lockdown Challenge Activities”. The aim of this activity was to connect to the students with the support of the teachers. A small group of students from remote tribal locations who had access to at least basic mobile phones, participated in the initiative. The teachers who supported this drive shared video/audio clips of conversation practice and expression reading activities of the students.
Launch of the Karadi Path Programme in 15 Srilankan Refugee Camps
In September 2019, Organisation for Eelam Refugee Rehabilitation (OfERR), an NGO that works for Srilankan refugees in ensuring their upliftment and empowerment, associated with Karadi Path to implement the ME SLL Programme in 3 centres across Chennai, Trichy and Cuddalore Districts as a pilot project. After a year’s implementation, based on the positive impact created amongst the children, OfERR agreed to extend the programme implementation to the 15 centres in 8 Districts (SLR Camp) as phase 2 from the AY 2020 – 2021. The phase 2 programme is implemented with funding support from Ipsos – CSR Initiative through OfERR as part of their Education support to the under-privileged children in the refugee camps supported and run by them. The programme was officially launched with a basic orientation to the facilitators on 18th June 2020 through the online platform Zoom. The launch was followed by the teachers training workshop to the facilitators from 29th June 2020.
The Path to Last Mile Learning (PLML)
PLML is a series of interactions with leaders, bureaucrats and experts from international organisations that will set the ground for an internal hackathon to bridge the Covid-induced digital divide in learning that has alienated millions of children from access to education. The interactions are meant to be intense and lead to scalable and long-term product ideas to deliver Karadi Path’s immersive learning to children from the lower-economic strata of society – those who are out of schools due to the pandemic, and have no access to smart phones or internet. Karadi Path has so far had expert interactions with Ms Sukanya Subramanian, Education Specialist, UNICEF, Dr.R.S.Praveen Kumar IPS, Secretary, Telengana Social Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society (TSWREIS) and Ms. Rema Mohan, CEO, National Stock Exchange Foundation (NSEF).
Karadi Path Online Classes
Ensuring that there is never a lockdown on learning, Karadi now meets students online! Students have been attending the online Karadi Path sessions from the comfort of their homes. Not only are they enjoying Karadi’s songs and stories, they are also learning so much! The virtual Karadi Path sessions provide the students with an opportunity to engage with the screen in a meaningful manner. During the session, the students can be seen doing actions, singing along, enjoying the stories and participating in the various language-based activities.
Karadi Path Makes Headlines – Maharashtra Times, 24th June 2020
The MVP group of schools largely caters to children from low-income populations and has been implementing the Karadi Path programme for the past four years. Initially, this intervention started with four schools as a trial and error programme and was for half the strength. Hearty congratulations to the team for the great support to schools and for making this prominent mention possible.
Excerpt from article:
‘…students from vernacular background are left behind only for the lack of English language skills. Because of the unique approach of Karadi Path, students have shown tremendous improvement in their language skills. The principal of Gangapur branch said, “Students have picked up new words and have also learned synonymous words. Within a short period they have become more confident. They have shed their fear of the English language and this was only possible because of the programme.”’
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