The District Panchayat of Palakkad wanted to have a programme for developing the English language proficiency of children of classes 5 to 7 as pat of the Harishree project. Launching RACE was not possible as it required multimedia facilities in the classroom. At the same time Discourse Pedagogy used in RACE was to be retained and disseminated to as many schools as possible. This line of thinking paved way to the conceptualization of REAP. As was done in RACE, a story that would appeal to the middle school children was needed. In the place of the visual narrative of RACE, oral narrative could be used. Anandan did not want to introduce a ready-made material. Instead he wanted to engage a group of teachers and evolve a material through their thinking. A few teachers working in schools under the district panchayat were selected as key resource persons and a series of workshops were conducted to develop the materials needed for the learners as well as the teachers.
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February