Extempore Speaking exercise in the Library.

Words can do wonderful things. They can urge, they can wheedle, whip or whine .They can forge a fiery army out of a hundred languid men. said Gwendolyn Brooks.

Keeping the above in mind, the last two weeks of the Library periods before the exams, ended with a speaking exercise called Extempore. Students from classes V-IX were a part of this extempore activity during their Library periods. The topics were given on the spot and each speaker was given a time limit of 2-3 minutes. Topics of the activity for the first week in classes IV and V were - My favourite book, Our school library and Books: our best friends.

The excitement and zeal in the students could be seen from their speaking skills. The children spoke quite confidently and were very eager to speak about their school library. Some of them even expressed a desire to become librarians, when they grow up. Their love for the books was clearly evident from the way they spoke eloquently about their favourite books. Topics for the middle school were - Books vs E-Books and Pleasures of reading. The children were also encouraged to talk about any book of their choice. While a majority of them were in favour of books some supported E-books as well.

Through Pleasures of reading they talked about how they imagined themselves as one of the main characters of the book they read. Arya of class VIII in her speech, shared a funny anecdote about how her friend, Khushi Gaba, was once so engrossed in reading that while coming to school she left her bag in the van and reached her class with only the book! It was only after a while that she realised that her bag was missing! This little anecdote tells us how happy and cheerful we are when we read books.

The topics for the following week were different for classes V and VI.The topics were- My favourite character, If I were a book, Reading is to the mind as to what exercise is to the body. Children from class V discussed their favourite characters. Some of them spoke about Geronimo Stilton , Greg from Wimpy Kid, Harry from the famous Harry Potter series while some chose cartoon characters like Noddy, Bheem and Tintin. Fariyah of class V wanted to be a book so that I could keep her in the library! Avishi of class V-E felt that books play an important role in enhancing childrens vocabulary and concentration. At the same time it helped them to be mentally fit and stress free.

Topics for middle school were Book Fairs and Book exhibitions help in generating interest in reading, Do you think that classic books are losing their value to contemporary books? and My favourite author. The children had some valuable inputs on the first two topics. According to some of them, classic books have rich and fine literature, which is why they are still read by a wide genre of readers. On the other hand contemporary books are easy to read and are liked by todays youth. Many of them decided to take up the last topic that is My favourite writer. Some of them spoke about J.K.Rowling a famous writer who writes mainly about childrens fantasies. A few spoke about Shakespeare as well, since last year was his 400th birth anniversary,. For some, their favourite writer was Roald Dahl as he was our theme writer during Library Week 2016. Jeff Kinney, Ruskin Bond, Sudha Murty, Dev Pilkey etc. were the featured writers during the extempore speech session.

At the end of this activity I felt very happy and satisfied with some of the good and confident speakers including Antriksh, Hardik, Nyasa and Aanya of class V; Khusboo, Amay Vatsal, Ananya, Jasleen of class VI; Raafe, Swami Lahiri, Vedika, Aadrita, Gurmeher Longani of class VII; Niktesh, Paramraaj, Harshit Verma, Aanchal, Raghevendras Gulia, Keerat, Khushi Gaba, Kirti, Samar, Tejkirat, Arya, Rishika etc. of class VIII; Gauri, Meher Shreya Gogia, Shashwat of class IX.

I think that through this activity, the level of confidence improved in most of the speakers and some of them overcame their fear of speaking in public. At the end of this activity some of the good speakers were given books as gifts, to recognise their reading skills. I hope it helps them to become even more motivated towards reading!

Ms. Tarannum Athar.