Pedagogic Strategies
2.6.1 Strategies for the Preparatory Stage (R1 and R2)
a. Oral language development:
A strong base in speaking skills has a significant influence on writing and reading abilities in the case of language learning. Listening to a variety of contexts, texts and literature would enhance the vocabulary which further leads to proficiency in speaking. Students must be en- couraged to speak about their experiences and describe the texts that they listen to or read.
They need to listen to teachers talking about books and reading out text from diverse genres.
Similarly, students listen to/watch the news (radio/TV), movies, serials, educational chan- nels with subtitles, and audio-video materials. They could be asked to respond, describe, nar- rate, summarise, and do role play from what they listened to. Student interactions among themselves based on the activities mentioned above will be useful too. Activities such as sto- rytelling and discussion, conversation on themes, and opportunities for students to talk and share their experiences through free and guided conversations enable oral language skills.
b. Developing reading comprehension:
This is the stage where the beginnings of ‘reading-to-learn’ can happen. Teachers facilitate reading activities for developing the ability to understand different texts. The ability of com- prehension encompasses multiple abilities such as making meaning of words, building con- nections between the words, making meaning of the whole sentence, predicting the next sen- tence, building connections of meaning between sentences, and grasping the main ideas of a paragraph/text through connecting their imagination and experiences. Through developing this ability, students get the pleasure of reading and continue to explore different genres of reading.
Some classroom strategies to develop reading comprehension are students reading aloud, reading and talking, repeated reading for fluency, doing shared readings, guided readings, independent readings, relating readings to prior knowledge, and summarising.
c. Developing writing skills
To improve writing skills, writing activities require persistent practice and deliberative focus in the classroom. Many times, writing is limited to copying a given text, copying answers to questions, and reproducing what is memorized. This does not help with the development of writing skills. Writing to express their understanding of the text, their views, and their opin- ion, and independent writing need to be taught and practised. The ability to write requires organizing thoughts and presenting them in writing form to present to the audience. Writing is also essential for fulfilling many functional requirements in life.
Writing skills can be taught effectively by reinforcing with lots of purposive speaking first, by exposing students to different samples of writing forms and styles, teaching them planning and drafting before writing a piece based on audience and purpose, and modelling good writ- ing for them. Writing is also learned better when students are taught to write to communicate with a relatable purpose, encourage to write on varied themes, help them with guided writ- ing, and finally allow to do independent writing.
d. Vocabulary development:
The richness of vocabulary determines students’ proficiency in comprehension and language use. Teaching writing, reading or speaking to communicate their ideas, and vocabulary should be part of daily instruction.
Some useful strategies for developing vocabulary are helping students predict contextual meaning of words, engaging them in word games and word building activities, and teaching them to use a dictionary.
Teacher’s Voice B-2.6-i (To be edited)
Developing interest and preference in reading
To create interest in books among children, it is necessary to give these students books to read. It would also be important to read books to students and discuss books with them. As a teacher of class 4, I keep doing such efforts for my students often. Because of this, I can see that some children are getting interested in reading books.
Today I thought that I should read the book ‘Kali Aur Dhamin Saap’ by Zai Whitaker to the children. The book belongs to the school library. The book is about Kali, a child of the snake-catchers of the Irula tribe in Tamil Nadu. The story depicts Kali’s isolation from school, lack of friendship with children as he comes from a marginalized section of society.
He is also very clever in catching rat snakes which other children cannot do.
Before narrating from the book, I sat the children down in a circle. I started talking to the children by showing the pictures of the book to the children. They were given chances to guess what the story might be about.
First, the children were asked to read the name of the book. Some children read out its
and Dhamin is the name of the snake.” Students further added, “From the picture it looks as if the snake and the boy would be friends.” Then the children were told that just like the Paniha snake which lives in the water, there is also the Dhamin snake, which is long, lives in the agriculture fields and eats rats.
Then further I talked to the children, “Looking at this picture, what will happen in the story?”. Then, Sahiba spoke, “There will be a snake near the river. The boy will go there and make him his friend”. Then Muskan spoke, “The boy will go there, he will say to the snake that will you befriend me?”. Lucky then guessed, “Kali will be very poor. He will earn money by showing the snake to people”. Sammo quickly followed, “Kali will be sad”. And Tauseef was not far behind, “Kali will see a snake on the canal”, he declared. Similarly, few other children also expressed their guesses.
The conversation continued with students. I asked them by showing the next picture “How does Kali go to school?”. A few students said, “He looks sad. He might not want to go to school.” Here the children were able to capture the emotion depicted in picture. When I asked, “Why would he be sad?”, one of them said, “His mother must be telling him to go to school and he will not feel like going”. Fiza was rather insistent, “His grandmother must have sent him to school”. Another eagerly said, “He will be late for school, and he will be scolded in school.”
Then I read from book, “…he has no friends in school”. I asked the children “why wouldn’t he has any friends?”. They managed to say, “Because his father catches snakes, no one would make him a friend.” They were able to guess rather accurately indeed. From this, I was also getting to know that without reading, they identified the social discrimination with the help of experiences gathered from their own social interactions. Later, when the children saw the picture of a snake hanging on a stick in the picture, the story suddenly expanded in their imagination. The children started saying, “Kali catches the snakes and then he will become friends with the children in school.” After this, I continued reading on the next few pages and they were able to guess accurately what happened next by looking at the pictures.
The children liked the pictures of this book very much. Each student shared their favourite pictures from book like Kali catching the snake, putting it in the bag, the classmates clap- ping for Kali, and getting ready to be his friend, the class teacher coming out from under the table, etc. At the end of the book, the children are happy looking at picture where many children who did not talk to him before finally agreed to be friends with Kali.
I also understood during the discussion that Gulfam, a child in the class, found this story very relatable to him. Gulfam belongs to a family of performing arts and during the holidays he goes to perform at different places with his grandfather. His grandfather also keeps a snake with him and displays it too. During the conversation in the class, he tried to mention that earlier in the class, couple of his friends used to tease him by saying ‘Kalandar-Kaland- ar’. It seems that students who teased him got reflected and felt bad about it.
After discussing about the book, the children in the class also discussed about their food habits. In this conversation, Sammo and Gulfam kept their point, “whatever food that we all eat. we should not discriminate in the class”.
Then the children were asked which parts of the story they liked best. Children said, “When Kali caught the snake and the children clapped.” Couple of more questions related to how teacher scared, Kali’s friends acted earlier and later, etc. were asked and discussed with students.
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.