Left – Right

 M. Ramakrishnan

CBSE, EVS, Class III, Unit – 22

Start… take right turn….walk five step, then turn left....

Objectives of the lesson
1. To understand the direction, right, left, front and behind
2. To understand the map and interpret symbols
Engage
- Start the discussion by asking children to raise their right hand and left hand
- Poem – put your right hand in, put your left hand in…..
- Tracing the hand activity
Explore
- Naming the objects placed on the side of hand picture that the children traced in the notebook/paper
Doll- Activity/game
- Asking children to bring used dolls from their home

- Divide the students into group of four/five

- Placing various objects around the doll
- Students will have to name the objects around the doll by indicating the direction example: pencil is placed front of the doll, eraser is on the right side of the doll…. Etc.
- In the doll game, students will change the position of the doll and identify the direction
change of objects.
Or
Instead of doll game, children could play the game among themselves with one person acting as a doll.

Explain
- Tracing the home to school activity (page no 147) - this activity is there in the text book
– teacher will give the print outs of the picture and ask the children to trace the direction first. Then students have to write the direction of change at every corner
- Naming the places on the right and left side (in the picture)
- Replacing the symbols with pictures example : Hospital with cross symbol (+)
Elaborate
- Students will draw a map from their home to school. They will use the symbols in the map.

Evaluate
- Evaluating the elaborate activity
- Worksheets

Teacher tryout and reflection
Engage
I raised my right hand and asked children to say, what is this? Some of them said finger and others said hand. Then I raised my left hand and posed the same question, what is this? They said “hand… hand”. I asked them to differentiate the two hands, but they could not. I asked them
which hand would they use for eating. They said “Soththu kai”. I explained “Soththu kai” is called ‘right hand’ in English, and other hand is ‘left hand’. I asked them to raise the right hand first and raise the left hand next, they did it correctly. This activity was repeated many times with changing sequences.
The next activity was singing the song with actions, the song, put your right hand in… put your right hand out… just turn around… is given in the text book (CBSE, EVS class III page no 145). I demonstrated the song with actions, following this the entire class sung the song with actions.
Then four volunteered and came forward to sing the song.
After the song activity students were asked to trace their own hands in the notebook. I thought that it would be difficult for them to trace their right hand by having pencil in left hand, since most of them are predominantly right handed. But amazingly they all traced their hand, except one who struggled to use her left hand to trace the right hand. Finally her friend helped her in tracing. They also coloured the traced hands. Now, I asked them to name who are sitting immediate right and left side.

Teacher reflection 

Children were interested in the class when I included them in the activity. The children found it difficult to understand the meaning for English words, even right and left hand. In Tamil they know what is right and what is left hand.

Explore
I placed some objects like pencil, pen, eraser, scale etc on both sides of a doll, and asked children to name the objects on the four sides of the doll. They said in Tamil, I replaced Tamil words with English and explained the four sides to the doll, i.e. right, left, and front and behind. Then children came one by one and named the objects placed around the doll, I kept changing the position of the doll’s face. I asked the children to stand three in a row, they were six rows. Starting from the middle  position, children have to name the persons who
are standing around them on their four sides by indicating direction and name.
Teacher Reflection
The doll activity was my second class, I found few children totally forgot what I taught or what they learned in their previous class. I analyzed the reason, it could be due to the non-involvement of those children in the classroom activity. So I decided to include every child in this activity,
and tried to maximize individual participation in activities.
Explain
The next activity was map activity which is given in the textbook (CBSE, EVS Class III, page no 147). In this map a child, named Ruchira starts from her home to school, on the way to school she makes many turns to reach the school. I explained the map like a small story and asked children explain the map and locate the direction of the places and objects that the girl crosses while going to school. They explained the map in Tamil, but they were not able locate the places and objects that came on her way to school. They could not visualize the position of the girl in the map and name the objects. So, I decided to draw a big map on the floor of the classroom, replica of textbook map, and made them to walk as likethe girl walks in the map. After this activity they were able to locate Ruchira’s position and name the places and objects.
I asked whether they have seen symbols like cross (+), children with school bag, car etc. on the road sign boards. Few children said that they have seen cross symbol in medical shop. Then I explained that we can use symbols instead of objects and drew the objects and their associate
symbols on the board, and I asked them to copy them in their notebooks. I asked randomly what the symbol for hospital, and tree was? They said correctly, since everything was on the board. After this activity I gave them homework. They have to draw the map of their home to school and they can use symbols instead of objects. I gave few new symbols such as railway track, culvert etc, because it’s relevant to my school area.

Teacher Reflection
In the map activity, I thought that the children would read the map easily and locate the position of girl while she was going to the school. I tried different ways to elicit the answer from them, such as asking them to imagine that the girl Ruchira walks from home to school. What are the objects on the right side of Ruchira when she reaches the park etc? Finally I had to design a new activity that gives real experiences. Children at this age group will learn fast if the activity is designed to give real life experience.

Extend
Only few students brought the map and except one others just copied from the textbook, rest said that they noticed everything from home to school and in the class they will be able to draw. I gave them time to complete the map and again many of them just copied from the textbook. \

I called the children who drew the map correctly to explain to others. They demonstrated their map with actions, and they named the places they crossed on the way. All of them explained in Tamil and they used English words ------- such as building, school, railway track, home, shop, tree etc. After this, many of them came forward to explain their map between their home and school.

Teacher Reflection
I should have given more time for home work and also more demonstration on how to draw a map.
Evaluate
I had prepared three worksheets for assessment.
Worksheet 1- Drawing objects on the four sides
Worksheet 2 – Identify the objects in relation to the direction
Worksheet 3 – Identify the pictures in relation to the direction and colour them.
For the drawing objects on the four sides, I read out the objects on the four sides, they drew. All of them drew correctly. For the other two worksheets, I showed one example on how to circle/colour it. Many marked correctly and few of them marked the wrongly. I called the students who had marked wrongly, and asked four directions i.e right, left, front and behind. Interestingly all of them could show the correct picture when asked orally.

Teacher Reflection
For many children reading sentence in English is difficult. Students use various strategies to overcome this difficulty, example one child was just trying to read the word right or left. From my next class onwards, I plan to have more language part in my EVS class.