Teaching lessons and changing students’ attitudes through Interaction

Highlights:

• When the involvement of a family towards the schooling of their child is limited, most of the support that the child needs is required to be provided by the teachers.
• The use of discourse pedagogy and interacting with the students helped in increasing their participation in class and in creating enthusiasm among them to learn.
• Employment of various TLMs, such as interactive board, sand-tray models, and other projects of art and craft, make students be more involved in the class.

Background:

My name is Sasirekha. B, and I teach in the Government Middle School, TN Palayam. The school is situated in a rural area, and almost all the students hail from poor families whose involvement in the functioning of the school is almost absent. Since the care and concern of the parents over their children’s education is usually minimal, the students are fully supported by teachers. While there are 180 students in my school, the staff comprises 5 primary school teachers, trained graduate teachers, and the headmistress.

Case:

Given the limited exposure and the background of the students, they used to find English very difficult.

I had the responsibility of teaching poems to the students of Class 4. Before the class began, I always planned about how I could get the students involved in the classroom and make them participate in the activities. But, my students constantly struggled to read English words. So, I was very expectant and excited to attend the ACE training workshop offered by the Azim Premji Foundation. It was a 12-day workshop where different aspects of teaching, from description and narration to teaching poem and prose, were discussed. After taking part in the workshop, I decided to implement the aspects that I learnt at the workshop in my class in order to improve the learning ability of my students.

Outcome in the class:

In my class, I tried teaching the lesson modules that were aligned with the method of pedagogy that was discussed in the training. The module included picture descriptions, narration, eliciting of words and sentences from the students, reading-protocols (individual reading, collaborative reading, and reading aloud by the teacher), and a form of choreography that could be adapted to a drama. The overall process ensured that there would be a lot of interaction with and participation from the students.

At the beginning, I asked the students questions that were related to the lessons and interacted with them. It is then that I realized that the students started participating eagerly in the classroom activities. The students also tried to read a story and enact it with a lot of excitement. Finally, my students were learning English with joy.

Changes in the class:

Once I implemented the aforementioned pedagogical practice, the students started to read English by themselves. The teaching and learning process thus felt quite fruitful. The fear amongst the students to study English gradually disappeared, and the positive changes in their general attitude were quite evident as well. The communication between me and my students was also improved in the process—the students were eager to respond to each of the questions I put forward to them. I also created various engaging TLMs, such as interactive board and sand trays, to teach poem and prose to my students and enable them to understand the concepts easily. The students were further engaged through the activity of preparing models. Apart from learning English, the students were able to learn new things, such as drawing, colouring, and other creative activities..

Way forward:

My friends in my teaching circle has been helpful in providing me with some new ideas that I could use to teach English in an effective manner. I have learnt some new methodologies as well as about creating new teaching/learning materials to implement in my class. I hope I can help my students be well versed in reading and understanding English in the coming years while continuing to learn myself through the implementation of different methods in the classroom.