Turn to Textbooks Afterschool!!

Textbooks afterschool = Textbooks during school?

Not really. Children in India see just one prescribed textbook for each subject at each level. As schools often lack active libraries, and as learning usually does not go beyond memorizing the contents of the textbook - they do not refer to any other books. Most parents too believe that the textbook is the only thing the child must learn from.

How does an afterschool programme encourage reading outside the prescribed textbook in these circumstances? Luckily, we have several textbook publishers. There is of course the NCERT which designs the curriculum and has its own textbooks for the national CBSE syllabus. Then there are the various state boards printing their own textbooks for the schools following the state syllabus. Then there are any number of private textbook publishers.

It is quite an experience for the child to read the same lesson in another textbook - the way a concept is explained, the illustrations, and the review questions are all different. Checking another textbook to see what is similar or dissimilar as compared to the familiar one at school is a 'head fake' that reinforces and enriches learning.

So stock a lot of textbooks in your afterschool library!