” Next to it was a cage and inside the cage was a tiger, unbelievably, a real life, very large- pacing back and forth. He was orange and gold and so bright it was like staring at the sun itself, angry and trapped in a cage.”
This was a small peek from the story, The Tiger Rising, by Kate DiCamillo – a novella that we read together with our friends in the last week of the Diwali break. It was about an introverted boy, Rob who locked up his feelings and emotions in an imaginary suitcase after his mother’s demise.
Many of you must be thinking that a reading workshop must be very dull and boring. But I am glad to inform you that this workshop was in contrast to your thoughts. We had a great time doing activities, playing games and getting to know each other. On the first day, we were all shy and a bit scared as we did not know each other and doing activities together seemed a little difficult. But with time we were less shy and we had a great time sharing across standards. We also enjoyed being back to school after such a long break (in light of the pandemic) and expected it to be memorable. There were 14 of us from different classes – std. 6, 7 and 9. I am happy to say that it was the best thing I had experienced after such a long time.
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The workshop was conducted for 5 days. We started our first day off by introducing ourselves to each other and expressing our feelings at that time. We began with sharing our expectations and revisited the same every day.
Everyday we would read a few chapters from the novella together, talk and do some fun activities to explore the book and the library. We would also read a few chapters independently at home, every evening.
We learnt that this novella is a realistic fiction book. We learnt about realistic fiction during our workshop that it is a genre based on social and emotional causes. To understand it in an enjoyable way, we did activities such as book tasting, book reviews and musical books. Just like a treasure hunt , we played book hunt in which every chit led us to a book and the team that found out the last book won. Our introduction to realistic fiction enhanced our knowledge regarding books and our library.
Some of the books which we read during these games are – Gone grandmother, The heart and the bottle, Boo – When My sister died, Panchi Pyaara which further opened up the realistic fiction genre for us.
The days were further followed by some fun activities such as playing games and maintaining journals In the workshop in which we noted down our first impressions about the book and its protagonists, Rob and Sistine. We also drew some symbols that popped in the book.
In guided drawing we drew the first image that struck our minds after listening to the poem ‘ Tiger tiger burning bright’ by William Blake.
We shared our sorrows and fears in the grief maps that we made with our friends.This was an important theme running through the book.
In the workshop, there were no rights or wrongs but just our views and opinions.We could share about our joys, life experiences, griefs and sorrows with everyone. Last but not the least we dressed up as our favorite characters from the book and played a game, hot seat. In this game we imagined ourselves as the characters we had dressed up and other students asked us questions regarding the references in the book and we answered the questions. All these factors acted as a motivation for us to learn something new and increased our curiosity as readers. We really enjoyed this workshop. All the activities, fun and games really made our vacation very memorable.
This blog was collaboratively written by Prisha Shah (std.9 ) and Pratha Bhatia (Std. 7).