Pedagogic Strategies
2.6.2 Strategies for the Middle Stage (R1 & R2)
On completing the book, I showed them many story books from school library with diverse context and talked about how interesting those stories are. I also gently pushed them to choose the books which they want to read and asked them to borrow the books. It is clear that children have diverse interests while choosing books. A few wanted to explore other books in the library too.
b. Activities for developing reading skills:
This is the stage where ‘reading-to-learn’ would happen to a greater extent. Here, reading is not for just meaning-making but also to develop other higher-order skills of interpreting, analysing, and summarizing. Later, this will help the students to develop reading habits.
i. Developing functional reading skills: Teaching-learning materials for functional reading that are useful for their day-to-day life such as applications, letters, reports, invitations, emails, and essays should be chosen. Students need to see different kinds of letters, posters, and circulars. They get the chance to recognize and understand the purpose of each of these with the teacher’s help. Additionally, some specific materials can be used where students learn to recognize the use of ambiguity, contradiction, paradox, irony, sarcasm, and understatement in the text.
ii. Developing literary reading skills: In the Middle Stage, reading literature is one of the main components of language learning. Teachers can conduct a variety of literature- related activities (E.g., choosing a genre for the week, or a theme for the week). In these activities, students learn to describe the effect of words used, identify basic literary devices, and share their overall experience of reading the text.
iii. Developing critical reading skills: The teacher encourages independent student reading of a fiction or non-fiction text and gives space to discuss the intent of the author, understand the context, identify core content, and interpret possible meanings thus enabling critical reading.
c. Building students’ interest in reading:
It is necessary to build interest among students through engaging in exciting activities at school.
These activities must be a part of the regular language classroom. For example, activities like
‘book of the day’ (where extracts from a chosen book gets read in the class, and students discuss the plotline, characters, and themes in the book), ‘author of the day’ (where students read many works of the same author and discuss their style and broader concerns of the author), making a trip to the local library (to learn about book cataloguing, book search, and library maintenance), organising for a literature festival (filled with book talks, exhibitions, creative writing competi- tions, have exhibits about authors from all walks of life), and a book exhibition (students display their current readings) would enhance student interest in books and reading.
d. Activities for developing writing skills:
i. Functional language writing skills: Students will learn some basic forms here.
1) Essays and reports: The teacher provide students with one or two samples of essays and reports pointing out how to identify the audience and purpose in each sample of the report and essay. The teacher then explains how to use a variety of planning strategies (including graphic organizers) to generate and organize ideas. As the second step in this process, the teacher asks the students to ideate and come up with ideas and organize their essays/reports. Students then move on to compose a few paragraphs with elaboration and continuity. The teacher explains how
vocabulary and information enhance writing about an idea, and how tone and voice add to the style of writing. Students must be encouraged to proofread and revise their writing for clarity of content, appropriateness of vocabulary, and relevance of
2) Writing for the media (emails, blogs, comments, and posts): Students learn to construct appropriate messages for the media in the classroom and identify the attributes of media writing, namely, authorship, format, content, and purpose. While learning to write in this context, the teacher could provide samples of well-written blogs, emails, and comments.
ii. Literary language writing skills:
1) Experiential writing: A book/situation may be done collaboratively selected by the teacher and the students. The teacher asks them to share their initial thoughts or experiences with others, which helps the children to articulate orally. This will bring further clarity to thoughts for the third step, which is, the teacher shares an example of well-known experiential writing and explains the nuances of the same. Finally, the teacher allows the children to write independently and freely, which can be
proofread and reviewed.
2) Literary appreciation and critique: For Literary appreciation or critique writing, a book or a literary piece must be read carefully and repeatedly. The teacher
encourages students to write the critique without any help. The teacher can then explain a few attributes of critique writing (comparing viewpoints, interpreting the character’s voice/author’s intent, and assessing the word/content choice).
Teacher’s Voice B-2.6-ii (To be edited)
Interviews
I am a teacher working with class 6 students. A learning outcome on developing the inter- viewing skills in students was in the prescribed list of learning outcomes. I designed four activities to help my students develop this skill – one of them is described here in detail.
I can speak to and learn from others
Step 1 – To provide students with initial/preliminary experience of interviewing, I gave the students a chance to converse with the ayahs, clerks, head teachers and other personnel working in the school. and asked them to learn more about their work and areas of interest/
hobbies.
I divided the students into four teams. I told them that they could conduct interviews of the school personnel and staff during the break. I also encouraged them to interview whoever they wanted/wished to talk to. (At this point, there had been no discussion about the prepa- ration needed to conduct an interview.)
I ensured that the children were allowed to interview people of their choice during recess.
While observing the interviews conducted by the children, I identified some key points that could be discussed at the next stage.
Step 2 – I put forth a question to the students who had engaged in conducting interviews at this stage. “Class, what do you think are the points that you should keep in mind while
Drawing the attention of the students to specific the points on the blackboard, including mutual introduction and statement of purpose, preparation of interview questions, punctuality, documentation, I planned to provide opportunities to strengthen their skills on these topics.
To start with, I asked the class “Imagine that you are interviewing a farmer. How would you make the introduction/ introduce yourselves to each other? Let us act out this situation.” I allowed six students to act out this scenario. While the children were engaging in the role play and making introductions, I made sure that the purpose of the interview was clearly stated and that the other students also notice.
To develop the skill of preparing interview questions in the students, I gave the students a list of questions to the students and asked them to identify which questions were appropri- ate and those that were not.
Why do you engage in agriculture?
Your efforts are encouraging to all. How has farming made you happy in life?
Isn’t it hard get water for the crops?
What do you feel about people’s over reliance on vehicles?
What were your childhood memories like?
What kind of facilities have you put in place to ensure sufficient water supply to your field?
Will your children continue this work?
How would you encourage your children to continue this work after you?
I also asked them to specify their reasons for deeming certain questions appropriate and others as inappropriate.
Following this discussion, to provide students the experience of constructing interview questions, I asked the students to create interview questions for a difference situation – that of an interview with an Anganwadi teacher.
Upon observing the questions constructed by the students, I reminded them that the ques- tions should be clear, simple, and relevant to the topic. I also informed them that the ques- tions should be respectful of the person and of the profession.
Further, I informed the class that punctuality was important when interviewing someone.
First, the interviewer (here, the students) had to inform the interviewees the time they would require completing the interview and adhere to it.
I then told the class regarding the way to record interviews: I introduced the two mod- els/examples to record interviews, depending on the purpose of the interview. I provided the two samples to the class and asked them to observe the differences between the two. Fur- ther said to reserve the same model for use in documentation activity.
The second activity involved the students watching a video of an interview on my mobile phone and discussing it. Following these two activities, I decided to provide practical experi- ence in conducting interviews and in applying their knowledge to conduct interviews. I told the class, “Now, we have understood the method of conducting an interview. Can you con- duct an interview with any one person of your choice outside the school?” The final activity involved narrating and editing the interview they did.