Learner-friendly language classroom—A case study

Highlights:

• The application of discourse-oriented pedagogy to achieve the goal of enabling students to fearlessly communicate in English.
• The task of writing a simple description and a conversation has been made easy through the application of this pedagogy; the writing and speaking skills of the students improved.
• The holistic approach to language-teaching not only develops a student's skills, but it also motivates them to be creative thinkers and write better.

1 Introduction

a) Background of my school:

GPS, Nettapakkam is situated in a rural area. There are 330 students in the school, and most of them hail from poor families.

b) Key areas of professional interest:

My key areas of professional interest include singing, drawing, art and craft, dance, drama, puppetry, magic show, choreography, cultural programs, wall decoration, and exhibitions.

I teach English to the students of class 5, Math to class 4 and class 2, as well as EVS to class 5.

2. Case Study

2.1.Objective:

I am the class teacher of the 5th standard, and I teach English to my class. While in class, I make it a point to speak in English. My students often attempt to speak in English. However, they are only able to repeat or reproduce the phrases that I use in class. I have also noticed that not all students were ready to use English in class. I wanted for all my students to be able to speak fluently and confidently in English. To achieve this, I adopted the methodology of Acquiring Competence in English (ACE), which I was introduced to through an in-service training program. My objective was to ensure that the learners used English without any fear during their classroom interaction.

2.2.Methodology:

In my new approach to teaching, I primarily used picture-based interaction as a means to elicit language from the learners. Based on the picture, the learners were encouraged to write discourses, such as descriptions and conversations. They were also given poems to which they had to add lines after creatively thinking about it. Further, the textbook lessons were taught using various activities, such as storytelling (using sand tray, puppetry, and interactive board), dance-choreography, and drama.

Thus, I applied the discourse-oriented approach in my classroom.

2.3.Procedure:

a) Generating descriptions through picture-based interaction:

I distributed colour printouts of a picture to all students, and I asked them to observe the picture for a few minutes. Following this, the students were asked to say the words that came to their mind after seeing the picture. I wrote down the words/phrases/sentences spoken by the students on the board. Then, I made them sequence the sentences as per the questions given as follows: (i) What you see in the picture? (ii) What are the actions that are happening in the picture? (iii) What you feel about the picture?

This led to the generation of a description by the students of the class as a whole.

A visualization of the blackboard work

This was followed by the students working in groups (having 5 members each) to generate descriptions for other pictures (from the textbook as well as external sources). Finally, the students were made to work on pictures individually, and the generated descriptions were corrected by me on the spot. However, I felt that the exercise would have been more fruitful if we were able to edit every individual and group work through discussions with the whole class.

b) Conversation:

The students were encouraged to think about the possibilities that the scenes presented in the given picture. They were then asked to generate a conversation between the characters in the picture. This exercise enables the students to think and speak creatively when discussion takes place.

c) Poem generation:

The students were made to add new lines to the existing poems, and they even composed new poems for pictures. In the case of the existing poems, the students followed the rhyming patterns and added lines accordingly. This task made them to think more and more in their own way. The poems written by the students were pasted in the classroom for all to see, which made the students very happy.

d) Storytelling:

The students composed their own stories based on pictures and narrated it in the presence of their peers. A number of creative stories were written by the students for a single picture. Some of them even drew stick figures to illustrate their stories. The students were also encouraged to narrate the textbook lessons in their own way. To supplement their narrations, the students created puppets, sand trays, and interactive boards with my help.

Puppetry: The students made their own puppets using old clothes, sticks, socks, and other such things. The puppets were used to animate their narration. For example, the students wore finger puppets and made an animation with them inside a decorated box (theatre box). Finger puppets, cloth puppets, stick puppets, and hand puppets were among the different kinds of puppets that were created by the students.

Sand trays: A tray filled with sand was used as the stage, on which the cut-outs were fixed and moved around to animate the narration. This provided a visual element to the narrative and an overview of the story/poem that was being taught.

Interactive board: This is a board made out of foam sheet, which is decorated by the students. Background images and characters of the story/poem were made by the students using chart paper. During the narration, these backgrounds and characters were fixed on the board.

Puppetry performed by the students

Characters being fixed on the interaction board by a student

e) Choreography:

As and when a story or poem was read out by a group of students, another group of students were made to act it out. The scenes were mostly selected by the students through discussion. They make a human formation to create background, and the students who acted as the characters in the poem/story did so without using dialogues.

f) Drama:

The students discussed among themselves and wrote scripts with dialogues for the lessons in the textbook (prose). They also scripted dramas for themes outside the textbook. Examples of this included ‘Education of girls’, ‘Saving trees’, etc. Unlike the choreography exercise, the students employed dialogues for the drama.

g) Reading corner:

This is an exciting activity that gets all the students get involved in quickly. Each student is given a book, which is borrowed from the Azim Premji Foundation, to read for a period of one month. The students are supposed to read and re-read the story, thereby becoming familiar with it. The students who initially faced difficulty also picked up interest in the exercise after a couple of weeks. Besides this, the students utilized their free time to read other books during the dedicated reading-corner period. They felt free to take books from the class collection and read them.

3. Result

As a result of the new approach that I incorporated in my class, my students were gradually able to improve their skills in the English language. Discourses, such as description and narration, helped in improving their writing skills as well as reading skills. My students were very eager to showcase their skills in front of others, and, now, they are able to read out the story books in front of our headmaster with confidence. They conquered their fear of the English language and became confident enough to use it, both inside and outside their class.

4. The Learning Expo

After observing the growth of my students, I conducted a Learning Expo in my school, where my students performed choreography and drama, recited poems, and engaged in storytelling, using sand tray, interactive board, puppetry, and other such techniques, in front of the students, parents, and teachers from both my school and outside. The audience consisted of around 350 members.

While some parents cried upon seeing their own children’s performance, the parents of other students cried expressing their desire to see their children perform in this manner. It was a great day in my life. The DIS asked me to conduct the Learning Expo again so that the CEO could see it as well. Once again, my students performed well, and both the CEO and the DIS appreciated their efforts and gave them valuable feedback.

5. Conclusion

The first time I attended the first phase of the ACE workshop, I was quite disappointed about the training. However, when I employed the process continuously, the improvement in my students’ performance surprised me. So, when I attended the second phase of the ACE workshop, I was eager to develop my students’ skill in English further. During the class hours, my students made many unbelievable things, which could not be done by other students in my school. I am happy to say that my students continue to compose poems, write descriptions, and perform drama, choreography, and other such activities. The discourse-oriented approach not only brought about a great change in my classroom, but it also boosted my skills as a teacher.

Education is the most powerful weapon. For me, ACE training helped me unleash the powers of education for my students.

Teacher: K Meera, Primary-School Teacher, GPS Nettapakkam, Zone 4, Puducherry