Reading Tales to develop Critical Thinking project

From December 11 till December 26 Reading Tales to develop Critical Thinking project funded by Access Alumni Small Grants program has successfully finished for fifteen students in school#2 in Levakant town. Active Access Alumni Firuz Kholov 2016-2018 from Levakant and Sabohat Abdulloeva and Mehrangez Safarova from Kushoniyon 2018-2020, implemented the project and ETM alumna 2009 Zuhro Murodova helped them with participants. Access Alumni planned to have seven reading sessions after school from 2mp until 4 pm at the English classroom of ETM Zuhro Murodova. Their participants were 5th 8th 9th10 and 11th grade students from 3 schools in Levakant. I, Zeboniso Murodova the Access teacher was very happy to get their invitation to attend their training and share my Tajik Folk Tale Book with students and some reading strategies I used in my Folk Tale project. I love reading books, always inspire my students to read books. I felt very proud to observe my students as trainers and see how they teach others the way that I taught them. During the first virtual Access conference in December Firuz Kholov learned about grant writing process. Then contest for the best project proposal was announced after the conference. Three of my Access students from Kushoniyon were winners for the best project and one Access student from Levakant was winner too. For Firuz Kholov it was his first project, and he decided to take this chance to share his experience with Access studies with other students and payback to his school and community. He chose Reading Tales to Develop Critical Thinking. I as Alumni volunteered to help them with some reading activities and handouts. Access Alumni chose stories like Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and Beanstalk and Thirsty Crow. I saw participants learned how analyze the plot and the main characters in these stories with graphic organizers, such as Compare and contrast, Venn diagram, Cause and Effect and Mountain Plot and problem and solution and five-finger retelling chart. One interesting activity I have done with participants is reading theatre. They acted out Gingerbread man story. Students performed well their roles and did it very creatively. Students spoke English very well. I gave away my Tajik Folk Tale books to students and challenged them to read some tales at home and draw some pictures to some tales. They all retold some tales and showed their drawn pictures. I had an idea to update this book in the future and add some pictures of students’ there. The most interesting part was participants agreed to have a Reading club after school and to volunteer to read books to young learners and family members. Firuz Kholov with the grant money purchased English books and teaching materials for their English language teacher. I was very happy to have a Certificate of Appreciation from the hands of my students at the end. I could not attend Munisa Nazarova’s project, which was “English through Games”, and Marhaboi Akmalzoda’s project “American Holidays and Culture” and Sadriddin Tavarov’s project “Media Literacy” but I helped and supported them with their first step in writing and realizing grant. Now these students are aware of how to do grant how it is not easy work but they felt so happy that they helped their communities in such a difficult time. ZebonisoMurodova TEA 2009 /Fulbright alumna 2012