The books are built on a method Katha calls StoryPedagogy. The short version: children read a story, then spend time on it — noticing details, asking questions, disagreeing, connecting it to their own lives. The story does the teaching. This page explains how that plays out.
TADAA is the sequence the books use for working through a text. It stands for Think, Ask, Discuss, Act, Achieve. In practice it runs something like this:
Think. The child reads the story, or hears it read aloud, and sits with a first impression. What happened? What stood out?
Ask. Questions come up — about a word, a character's choice, something that doesn't add up. These are the child's questions, not a worksheet's.
Discuss. The group talks it through. Disagreement is fine and often the point. The adult takes part rather than supplying answers.
Act. Something gets made or done — a drawing, a role-play, a rewrite, a small experiment tied to the story.
Achieve. The child notices what they now see or understand that they didn't before.
The adult's role here is to read alongside the child and keep the conversation going. Katha calls this being a co-traveller.
Katha uses a handful of its own terms. Here is what each one means.
The five-step sequence above: Think, Ask, Discuss, Act, Achieve.
Nine things the reading works on over time: curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, confidence, competence, commitment, compassion, cooperation, and citizenship.
Katha's shorthand for the movement from understanding yourself to contributing to others.
Four themes that guide which stories are chosen: girls, the earth, equality, and kindness.
Katha's approach to assessment — following a child's interest and growth over time rather than scoring a single test. The related line from the Sutras: "a remarkable child is not merely markable."
"Complete learning" — the idea that a single story can open into many subjects: history, science, language, ethics.
Because the books are competency-based, discussion-led, and use art and role-play, they line up fairly closely with the NCF 2023, ICSE's competency questions, the IB PYP, and NIOS. Some schools use TAL as their main literature material; others use it alongside a prescribed text. The mapping document lays out the overlap stage by stage, including the places where it's partial.
See the curriculum mapping"When every story teaches every subject — knowledge comes from every side."
Sutra 6 · Purna Siksha