Books

So I decided the schools needed ‘leveled’ readers.


They do really. Kids need books.. books they can read. I don’t want to buy them, so what the heck: I make my own.

I got on-line and checked out some web sites.. found some free ‘downloads’.. it didn’t take long. Just a few hours. The free ones were black and white. I had to buy a new ink cartridge for the copier. Fifteen little books translates into 60 pages.. roughly. There are worksheets to go with each story, so of course I download those as well. A few more pages.. a little more ink.

Then I needed to get them copied. Schools here have good copiers, however, they are busy copying off exams for the most part. When they aren’t busy, they are broken.

I go to the print shop in town.. that takes.. hours. While I wait I walk around the big store with it’s books in English, coloured paper, laminating materials, coloured pens, folders and maps. I have to go to the bank for more money by the time all the printing is done.

I decided to start with ten sets of books.. two for each school. I hadn’t really done the math but that is 600 pages. And they don’t collate.

Yup.. 600 pages that need to be put in order and…coloured..

That is what I have been doing in the classrooms of Sungai Besar for the last two weeks. Getting school kids to colour 600 pages of “Zak the Rat” .. and friends. Sure they read the books.. enjoy the lessons. But some of them just don’t colour all that well.. and others are slow.. and most of them don't own crayons or pencil crayons so we need to get a stack of those.

Then they need to be cut out. I started doing this at school. .. most of the schools I worked at in Canada had super-sonic paper-cutters. Deadly blades that you pull down onto the paper into a clean, smooth, slice.. or the new ones that slide across with a razor sharp blade.. nope. Nothing like that around here. I used scissors. Yes, I tried to get the kids to help, but.. well we lost a few character heads.. things were looking pretty rough. I decided it wasn’t really a good idea.

So it took a while. I thought the teachers might help..

They didn’t.

I brought it all home and Vas assisted me. It is football season: no reason you can’t drink beer, watch the footy and cut out little booklets.

Then the background. I decided to glue all the booklets with short sounds (vowels.. a, e, i, o, u) onto yellow paper.. the long ones onto pink and the more complex stories on blue.

Teachers will know what they are handing out to kids just by looking at the colour. More paper and..

The scissors again. 600 pages.

Glued together..

Then they all have to be put into lamination envelopes and through the little laminator I bought for just such things as this.

Hole punched.

Metal rings put in place to hold them together and

VOILA! That’s it!

But I am not there yet. Sure, I have completed a few. But there is still colouring left to do. I am hoping to get that completed this week at Panchay Bedena, the school where I will be spending Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. It is Ramadan and the kids are tired.. colouring and reading is a nice quiet activity for them. We are almost there.. I will have examples for the teachers to see. We will use some of the readers in the classrooms.

It will happen.

But.. I am thinking now about the Dolch word list.. the tricky words you can’t sound out. Maybe I can make some flashcards.. a set of the first 200 words.. just one set for each school. It shouldn’t take long.. the first fifty on yellow.. then blue.. then… they would need to be laminated.. and cut out..

It takes time.  Makes me think of home..

Jackie and dad make owls. I hope they fully appreciate the fact that you can’t laminate or hole punch a carved owl.