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Sunbeam School Ballia
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Students of Sunbeam School Ballia reading at the long tables of the Nalanda Library, a member of staff at the head of the row.

Reading, Language & Library

17,574 books, 25 periodicals — and a room full of children actually in it.

The Nalanda Library

Counted,counted,not estimated.

The school does not say “over fifteen thousand books”. It says 17,574, alongside 25 periodicals — a figure with a units digit on it, which means somebody counted rather than rounded.

The periodicals are the quieter half and the more useful one. A library of books alone is a place you go for something you were already sent to find; a shelf of periodicals is where a reader meets a subject nobody assigned them.

And the photograph is the argument. The room is not empty in it: long tables, a full class reading, and a member of staff at the head of the row.

Students of Sunbeam School Ballia reading at the long tables of the Nalanda Library, a member of staff at the head of the row
The Nalanda Library at Sunbeam School Ballia between classes — reading tables and chairs, with shelves signed “Ballia Literature”, “Mythology” and “Magazines”
The reading tables of the Nalanda Library at Sunbeam School Ballia, set out beneath the periodical shelves

  • 17,574

    Books

  • 25

    Periodicals

  • Photocopier

    For easy access

  • Reading space

    For all

Children of Sunbeam School Ballia at the Reading Carnival racks, picking books from shelves headed “Story” and “Activity”
A corridor at Sunbeam School Ballia during the Reading Carnival, its book racks signed by section
A student of Sunbeam School Ballia in a prefect’s sash with a member of staff, from the school’s Ardent Reader Award photographs

What is run around the collection

A carnival,and a club with racks.

The school runs a Reading Carnival — a book fair set up along its own corridors rather than in a hall, so classes file past it on the way to lessons. Its racks are signed by section, and the signage names something the site had not recorded: a Reading Club, with racks headed Study Skills, Storybook and New Release.

Alongside it the school gives an Ardent Reader Award to its most committed readers, published in seventy-five photographs — though not, notably, with the winners’ names, so none is given here.

Nalanda Library
17,574 books · 25 periodicals.
Reading Carnival
A book fair run along the school’s own corridors, classes filing past it.
Reading Club
Racks headed Study Skills, Storybook and New Release — read off the school’s carnival signage.
Ardent Reader Award
For the school’s most committed readers — seventy-five photographs published, no names.
Language laboratory
One of the twelve — spoken language, recorded and reviewed.

The half a book cannot do

Recorded,then reviewed.

Reading is the input. The school’s language laboratory — one of its twelve laboratories — exists for the output, and its description is precise about what makes it different: spoken language, practised aloud and recorded, which is the part a textbook cannot do.

The recording is the whole point. A student who has only ever been corrected in the moment has never heard themselves; a student who has been recorded has, and that is a different kind of learning from reading a page about pronunciation.

The whole school of Sunbeam School Ballia seated under the canopy for an assembly, staff along the side

Language laboratory One of the school’s twelve laboratories

Above: the school assembled for the Ardent Reader Award. The school has published no photograph of the language laboratory itself.

And where the speaking ends up

On a platform,from Class I.

The test of a language programme is not the room — it is whether children are put in front of an audience, and how early. Sunbeam’s published record answers both, and the first answer is Class I.

  1. 01

    Class I

    Entered the Cohort Inter-Branch Attire Speak Competition — a speaking contest across Sunbeam branches, for six-year-olds.

  2. 02

    Class IV

    Took the top three positions across the whole Sunbeam group at the Virtual Interbranch Declamation.

  3. 03

    The language lab

    Spoken language recorded and played back, at every stage in between.

  4. 04

    Model United Nations

    One of the four inquiry rooms — debate, position papers and committee.

The book is not a cupboard

Seventeen thousand,five hundred and seventy-four.

The school publishes its collection to the book, its reading events and its language laboratory. It does not publish borrowing rights, opening hours, the Reading Club’s membership, or the names of its Ardent Reader winners.