Integrated approach to enhancement of students’ speaking skill

Tenzing Rapgyal
Many students are keen to learn English. They invest time and efforts to improve their English. However, most of them do not get the opportunities to converse in English. As a result they cannot express themselves and end up suffering. How can teachers handhold such students and help clear their mental blocks?

Fostering engagement with learning materials: a collaborative approach

B. Ajitha
Teacher training especially when sessions are conducted in a lecture mode are a challenge. It is neither easy to retain interest levels of teachers not to get them motivated to bring change to the classroom. Collaborative learning strategies like Jigsaw strategy and Reciprocal Teaching which encourage teachers to participate actively can be a welcome change for these sessions.

The key to student success

Manasa Sunkavalli and Vignesh Krishnan
Parent engagement is crucial for the academic and social success of children, especially those coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. By fostering a positive and open relationship with parents, educators can gain valuable insights into their students’ needs and help ensure that every child reaches his/her full potential.

No more tense moments in grammar class

B. Ajitha
English has always been a difficult language to master, especially grammar. Teaching tenses is problematic as students keep changing tenses while writing. This is especially so among high school students. In an ‘action research’ initiative, an online poll consisting of pre-determined set of questions was designed using digital tools to find out how much students knew about their tenses. The findings show how blended learning resources can be used to help students.

Escape from reality

Tim Hibsman
With schools closed, this is the perfect time for students to embrace research writing for all subjects. Students can be asked to research different topics and then provide their project through a traditional research paper and presentation. The optimum way to give students their assignments is through a model scenario. Provide students a role playing situation where they conduct research, write a report and present their findings.

Using data to improve learning

Ishita Ghoshal
Action research helps a teacher to enhance her reflective practices. It gives her a glimpse of the learning patterns, learning attitudes, gaps in learning and empowers her to use fact-based data to drive, explore and experiment to improve or innovate upon these patterns. The author illustrates this with an example from her own experience.

A ‘smart’ way to assess projects

Tenzing Rapgyal
A reflective teacher shares his thoughts on how he went about assessing students’ work when they were asked to work on an English project .

Blogs as a tool for reflective teaching

Jennifer Thomas
When teachers try out new methods or engage in experimenting with a particular lesson plan in the classroom, how do they get to share their experience with other teachers? Do they reflect on whether their new ideas found favour with the children or not? Here is a story of how teachers turned reflective by writing blogs and how the experience helped them get an insight into the various teaching- learning moments.

Why a teacher does what she does

Kinnari Pandya
The aim of education is to develop critical understanding in children and how successful a school is in this aim depends on the teacher and her pedagogy. We analyze how a teacher’s beliefs, ideas and knowledge of her students influence her pedagogy as we observe a math teacher in her classroom.

An action plan for project work

Tenzing Rapgyal
Work distribution and setting a timeline are important parts of completing a project work. But how can one create and implement an effective action plan? This is an important life skill that needs to be imparted to students. A teacher gives a first- hand account of how he helped his students to manage their time effectively as also to plan their assignments.