Teaching English in Class I

I was posted to the remote area of Diu, and was miles away from urban civilization and its benefits. When I was asked to teach Class I, I felt nonplussed. I was tired of everybody telling me, “teaching kids in this school is a fruitless job; if they manage to learn their a,b,c etc., it will be a wonder”. I began to wonder how I could teach children to read. As a child, I had been taught in a traditional manner, beginning with a year long practice of first the capital letters, then the small letters, followed by two and then three letter words, and finally short sentences. I had learnt many words by heart, and had been my teacher’s pet. But I still remember the pain in my hands and the boredom in my heart with hatred

My experiments with language across curriculum teaching English with the project approach

A bunch of thirty eager faces confronted me on my first day in sixth standard. Then they were bolder and clamoured around my desk with cries of miiis, miiis, miiss! Shall we open our text book? What lesson are you going to do? where is our teacher? Are you going to teach us English? Arhan does not learn his spelling. Seema gets poor marks in dictation. Will we have dictation everyday? Atul learns his questions and answers bi-heart

Classroom activities

In this section, we will present activity and show how teachers can develop simple as well as complex variations of the same basic activity

Language through literature

This is the fifth in the series of workshops on Teaching English to Middle School Learners. Number of Participants: 22 (19 teachers from various private schools, 1 kindergarten teacher, 1 program manager and 1 administrative staff member). Workshop Details This was a workshop on enhancing perspectives and pedagogy of teaching language through literature, and literary sensibility through poetry and short stories. On display on the bulletin board were several short stories which the participants took with them. There were also several poems displayed on the bulletin boards. The workshop began with a reading and analysis of the story “Voices” by Anthony Browne, which reflects upon the need to create the space for multiple perspectives and voices

Reports Report of a Three-Day Workshop on the Orientation of a Course on Early Literacy Pedagogy for Teacher Educators

A three-day orientation course was facilitated by Azim Premji Foundation at the Institute of Advanced Study in Education (IASE) Jabalpur as an introduction to a course on Early Literacy Pedagogy starting from November 2015. A total of 41 participants attended the orientation (3 IASE professors, 17 participants from District Resource Groups and 1 DRS, 10 B. Ed. students, and 10 DIET lecturers and Principals. It was conducted from 7 to 9 September 2015. The objective of the orientation was to build an understanding of literacy as a semiotic system by looking at the following aspects of early literacy: • How do children experience and understand the meanings of symbols and signs early in life, • How the literacy experience involves both cognitive and affective meaning-making • The history of literacy teaching practices, including adult literacy and the many meanings of literacy. This was done through simulations, thought experiments, and discussions, with each one taking the participants closer to the meaning of literacy. The orientation comprised six sessions. The first two sessions gave experiences of signs, symbols, pictures and music

Autonomy and accountability of the school head: how much is too much?

1982 : A typical school day at Kendriya Vidyalaya (KV). The day begins with just the same last minute scuffle for signing the attendance register and collecting class registers. You stand by and watch while the teachers hurry on to class and then to the assembly. Somebody side tracks you with an application for leave. The Activities In Charge gives you input on the day’s events. Assembly over; talk to latecomers, observe classes, teach, attend to parents, office matters, planning for functions, exams, parent teacher meetings. There were days when life was peaceful - and schools, happy places. Principal and teachers collaborated in capacity building measures for the school, self and students.School improvement was the joint responsibility of the staff.What was the role of the Principal? Not beyond being a manager

Creating enabling environment in Schools: an interview with Usha Aswath Iyer

Nivedita (N) : What is your experience of creating enabling environments for special children? As a teacher and principal is there any awareness/ training/ policy you need for managing it in a better manner? Usha (U) : There have been very few children with special needs in the schools I have worked in. In the early days of my career, my efforts were limited to using my common sense in trying to solve some of their problems related to the physical environment. No training has been put in place for the teachers or the administrative staff. Teachers and principals along with parents, need to be sensitive and counselled in supporting children with special needs so that they become happy children who are firmly set onto the path of discovery of life and learning

Authentic material and the communicative approach to language teaching

Let us think of a child learning her mother tongue. She is surrounded by people who speak to her and are happy even if she speaks a few broken words. Everybody applauds and celebrates her mistakes. The world of the child is rich with language! Can we build bridges from the child’s world to the classroom? Can we apply the principles of natural language learning to language teaching in the classroom? Can we use what the child sees and does in her early years, in her culturally rich environment

Classroom activities

Objectives: ·To practice sentence formation in English ·To develop the skill of constructing a story using a few sentences .To build an understanding of shades of meaning in synonymous adjectives .To develop vocabulary by understanding polysem

Creating a Literacy Rich Environment

Looking at the bare peeling walls of my grade I classroom everyday, I wondered how I did not hate school. But the fact is that I didn’t. My mind was rich with thoughts, and I lived most of my early life in the world of books. I thought I belonged there, and was one of the characters. Most adults thought I was crazy. But Baba, who introduced me to the world of books because he did not know what to do with a motherless child, did not think I was crazy. He told me stories, and encouraged me to think of the characters in the stories, to ask questions about them and to try and understand what it would feel like to be in their shoes. It was Baba who handed me a new book every Sunday and read it to me in bed