Turning pages: When teachers read aloud, restless kids listen
A teacher paused mid-sentence on a Tuesday morning and looked around her classroom in Madhya Pradesh’s tribal belt. Thirty children who usually fidgeted, talked, and walked out were sitting still. The room had gone quiet. Not the quiet of fear, but the quiet of children listening.
A year earlier, that silence was impossible. When Turning Pages Foundation first entered the free school, kids threw books and left mid-class. Today, those same children wait for story sessions. They question characters, act out scenes, draw endings, and call it their favourite part of the day.
Reading lost to pressure
The shift comes at a time when foundational literacy remains a crisis. Under NIPUN Bharat, many Grade 5 students still struggle to read Grade 2 text. Turning Pages Foundation, started in 2020 by sisters Bunty and Madhuri Pai with cousin Nayana Pai, says the problem starts earlier. By the time books reach children through exams and corrections, reading already feels like pressure, not pleasure.
The non-profit now works with government, aided, free and low-income schools across Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh. It reaches nearly 8,000 students and 150 teachers. Close to 15,000 books have gone into schools that earlier had almost no children’s literature.
Structure over donations
Turning Pages doesn’t just drop off books. Each school commits to changes in the timetable. A daily 20–30 minute DEAR period — Drop Everything And Read. A weekly double period for joyful reading. Forty minutes every week for teacher mentoring.
In class, teachers read aloud and let children respond freely. Kids predict endings, argue about choices, connect stories to their lives. The design also includes children with learning disabilities or autism through drama, drawing and oral narration.
Teachers first
The model puts teachers at the centre. Every year, the foundation runs a three-day training on storytelling, voice, pacing, and creating safe discussions. The idea is to make read-alouds feel joyful, not like extra work.
At SSVM Hippocampus School near Kanakapura, Karnataka, the change is visible. The school library grew from 12 books to nearly 3,000. Now the whole school reads every morning — teachers, principal, support staff, even security guards.
Habits, not marks
Success here isn’t measured by test scores. Teachers watch for habits: kids picking up books without being told, borrowing them for home, narrating stories to parents. In Mumbai, a Class 3 student tells her mother every story from school and misses reading even during summer vacations.
“We want schools to eventually say, ‘This is how we function now,’” says co-founder Bunty Pai. “Not because Turning Pages is present, but because reading has become part of the culture.”In classrooms that were once noisy and distracted, silence now comes from children choosing to listen.
