Flying Together

ENGAGE

Activity 1 - Initiating a discussion

The lesson is a story on how a group of birds stay united and escape a trap by acting together in a timely fashion. Hence I began the lesson with a discussion on the day to day activities, I asked them, “What are some of the things they are asked to do on time by their parents and teachers?” Students’ answers were on these lines.

Get up in the morning Do the home work Pack your school bag.

I gradually discussed what will happen when we don’t do our work on time. The discussion became very interesting and students respond- ed with multiple answers. One response that stood out was, “during a relay race, if one of us fail to pass the baton on time, we might lose the race’. This helped me  assess  their understanding on the importance of doing things in a timely fashion.

Activity 2 – Introducing the comic book

The lesson was a long prose and it could be overwhelming for the children. So I converted   it in the form of a short comic story with pictures and dialogues to make it simpler, readable, interesting and exciting for the children. I initially showed them just the pictures and asked them to guess the story. They were very imaginative and built the story in their own language. Then I helped them narrate their story in English.

They didn’t know the name of the bird in the picture. I usually teach new vocabulary by asking them to draw the images. Students drew geese and wrote its name. One student, who is good at drawing took the initiative and the others then followed her lead and colored the images. This was a sign of peer learning.

Image of geese drawn by children

EXPLORE

Activity 1 – Reading the comic book

Then I showed the comic story along with sentences to make them read. To make it simple for the students, I created dialogues in bubbles and made them correlate it with what they had imagined at the engage stage. 

This helped enthuse them to read and reduced their anxiety in having to read a long prose.

Activity 2 - Guided Reading

Then I read the with given in the text and made them link it what they read in the comic book. They could easily understand the story and en- joyed listening to it. They listened, read and repeated the folklore in chorus after me. We discussed the points that were there in the text but was missing in the comic book.

A few students were struggling to read and had to be given individual attention to make them read. Even though children were attracted by the comic strip, while narrating the story they could not go beyond those sentences in the bubbles and I had to help them narrate the story. When the children started reading the comic books, I was very thrilled as I achieved the objective I set out with. Children read about 16 sentences. Reading the whole prose might not be difficult for them now. Reading was an area the children were struggling with, this effort helped them and I intend to follow it in future too.

Activity 3 – Reinforcing key vocabulary through pictures.

Students wrote new words around the picture in the work book

EXPLAIN

Activity 1 – Using ‘Wh’ questions:

I distributed picture cards of some other stories and elicited the story from them by asking ‘Wh’ questions.

E.g.: Where is the crow? Where is your house?

What happened then?

I encouraged them to converse in English by providing them with clues. This made it simpler for them to narrate the story. This activity helped develop their communication and narration skills. Later I guided them to frame ‘Wh’ questions and use them regularly in conversations.

Activity 2: Using ‘Wh’ questions for simple conversation.

As an extension of the previous activity, I used real life scenarios to frame the ‘wh’ questions and helped them with some simple examples. Some of the questions I asked are as follows

What did you eat for breakfast? When did you get up in the morning? Where is your house?

Who is your best friend? Why are you late for school?

Initially they struggled to answer the questions. Their replies were all in one word and they could not frame structured sentences in English. So I helped them frame answers.Then I showed them a chart that explained when to use a particular word and that aided them understand the usage of a particular word. I also showed them a video that aided as a conversation starter. They started talking about what they saw in the video using the same slang and I used that as an opportunity to correct their pronunciation.