When I was asked to write an article for this magazine, I began wondering what I would write. Despite the many, many years of teaching behind me, I had a tough time deciding on a topic! Information is now available at one’s fingertips. Google on anything under the sun and hey, presto, you’ve got it! But oh, the thrill of creating a lesson plan from start to finish by yourself and seeing your children’s responses of enjoyment and learning, that is something one can only experience.

After a lot of deliberation and reflection, I finally chose to just share my experiences of teaching Environmental Studies in the primary classes with the readers. It happens to be one of my favourite subjects because of its huge potential to make the class creative, fun, and exciting for the child. One needs to have a clear, overall objective in relation to the subject and of course, one has to keep the age group of the child in mind at all times – not go overboard by cramming irrelevant activities.

The clear objectives that I have while planning lessons are:

• to make the lesson cross-curricular (to laterally refer the topic across all subjects) – to incorporate exercises which emphasize on observation and inferences (For eg. Instead of telling an urban grade 2 child, “The sun always rises in the east and sets in the west”, you can ask them to observe the movement of the sun over a period of days at different times of the day. They will discover the pattern themselves after which the names, east and west can be introduced).
• to keep the students engaged at all times.
• as the teacher, to facilitate only by asking questions that will get the children to think.
• to counter the child’s question by another question, extracting the answers from them, either individually or in groups. (Eg. in the 4^th grade instead of telling the students that, “water evaporates from the oceans, lake and rivers”, ask the children to observe what happens to water left in a saucer, what happens to wet clothes and what happens when a plant is covered with a plastic bag? Let them conduct the experiments and find out about evaporation and condensation. Once they find out that vapour needs a surface to cool on, ask them another question – “On what surface does water condense in the air?” (I’m sure many a teacher wouldn’t have asked this question to herself! Actually I was asked this question by a child and I had to find the answer before getting back to the class the next day).
• it is very important for the student to feel the ownership of learning through his/her own observations.
• and to top that, the teacher herself needs to understand the topic thoroughly if she is to answer questions by the children.

The author worked at the Rishi Valley School for 14 years. She is now the Quality Head of the Primary School at the four Parikrma Centres for Learning, Bangalore. She can be reached at ambikap@parikrmafoundation.org.

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Scholarly knowledge of a subject is different from the kind of knowledge required to help others learn it. Unlike scholars, teachers cannot focus only on the content; they also need to know how to help their children understand that content.

Hence, teachers must restructure their content knowledge to make it pedagogical. This means, they must be able to view their subject through the eyes of their children. Many teachers develop this skill and generate topic specific strategies, and appropriate examples to engage children in activities that facilitate learning. Teachers may think that once they display models and get children to do all the activities as planned, then the children are learning. But this is not always the case.

For instance, it might be difficult for some children to believe that the size of an angle is not related to how long the arms of the angle appear.

To ensure that children understand what they are being taught it is important that the teacher takes into account preconceptions and misconceptions that children carry with them.

Developmental stages and common misconceptions
When angles are first introduced, most children think that the size of an angle varies with its arm length. Also, some of them fail to recognize equal angles in different orientations.

The author is Mathematics Team Leader at K D Ambani Vidyamandir (Primary school), Reliance Greens, Jamnagar. She can be reached at sinny.mole@ril.com.

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A wizard swooping down to fight a dragon… a king and his army fighting a fierce battle… a little girl’s first day at school… a day in the life of a scientist… a space journey… It is easy to get lost in the world of books. The drama, the mystery, the joy, the sorrow, the thrill… it’s like being in a world of one’s own – hidden away somewhere – where only you have the key to the world… the key being the book!

For anyone who has not felt the thrill of discovery in every book, it is difficult to understand the importance books can have in our lives.

At the least, they give us information or entertainment and at the most they give us new perspectives. Reading is not limited to gaining language skill. It is a means of discovery and the key to that vast and unimaginable world of books!

To teach a child to merely read the language and understand it is not enough. This is just the first step to a stage of reading independently and appreciating the language and all that it says to us. This skill must then be lovingly nurtured into a thirst for and a love for books and reading.

There are many ways of doing this. No matter what age one teaches, as a teacher, one can make reading an important part of children’s lives.

The first thing is to make it a big part of the classroom. Bring a lot of stories into class. At the primary level, one can bring in folk tales and fairy tales related to the topic being taught, mythological and historical stories related to festivals and important days and so on. The important thing is to bring them in as stories and make them an animated and exciting part of the class. The teacher needs to become a storyteller and use her voice, gestures, and expressions to bring the story alive. Other props – puppets, pictures, rhymes – could also be used from time to time.

The author is Head, Children’s Vertical at Swechha, an NGO that works on environmental issues. She helps design and implement workshops and classroom sessions on active citizenship in government and other schools. She can be reached at neha7779@gmail.com.

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Some of the best teaching approaches like Constructivist Theory and Learning by Doing are based on a relatively unknown and grossly underestimated concept, Nai Talim – The Gandhian Way of Teaching. It seems pretty distressing when such a comparison is made, but the underlying philosophy is still the same – cultural knowledge and hands-on experience is crucial for education.

This philosophy constitutes the core of my teaching methodology adopted for teaching science to my school kids in my second year of Fellowship at Teach for India.

Aim
Children should be able to appreciate the cause and effect of rain on both local and global scenarios. Measure and tabulate the observations, draw inferences and discuss local and global issues.

Normally, children in the primary section do not absorb abstract concepts easily, if at all. Thus, there arises the requirement of working around their natural tendency to explore, observe, and discuss new things to introduce concepts. So, our rain unit starts with activity. It involves stepping out of the classroom, observing – listing and drawing – the world and environment of living and non-living things around them. This is then followed by a discussion. If you are lucky enough, children will be smart to say “Bhaiya, in rain so many new plants and insects come… Where do they go after rainy season? Why they come only in rainy season?”

The author is currently a Teach for India Fellow and holds a degree in B.Tech from IIT, Chennai. He teaches Grade 4 at Lt. Shantabai Ladkat English Medium School, Pune. He can be reached at gunvant.jain2010@teachforindia.org.

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Science is life and nature, from which all principles and laws have evolved. While teaching science we should try and make it practical, involving examples from day-to-day life, following the approach of asking what, why, and how. This article is an attempt to explore some indoor and outdoor activities for teaching science.

Associating scientific concepts with day-to-day life
We can make the teaching and learning of science memorable and fun filled by associating scientific concepts with day-to-day life and by developing formulas or tricks to remember facts and classifications.

While giving assignments to children be creative. Such assignments automatically evoke children’s interest and curiosity. Here is an example.

Helping children remember the class of lever: To remember the characteristics of different classes of lever, students have to simply remember the formula, “FLE”. Starting from the first letter, the formula represents what is “in between”. For example, in class 1 levers, the fulcrum (F) is between the load and effort; in class 2 levers, the load (L) is between the effort and fulcrum, and in class 3 levers, the effort (E) is between the fulcrum and load.

The author is Head (Training & Development) Calorx Foundation, Ahmedabad and Registrar, Calorx University. He can be reached at shailendra.gupta@calorx.org.

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The role that misconceptions play in the construction of mathematical ideas in students’ minds is an area that has received a great deal of attention. Teachers need to understand these misconceptions and correct them through appropriate measures. This aspect of a teacher’s responsibility is very important.

The purpose of this study is to examine the misconceptions of students’ comprehension of an apparently simple concept like (geometric) straight lines. Effort has been made to identify the area for correction and recommend effective strategies to help students modify their misconceptions.

Data
Sample papers taken for this study were from grades 3, 4 and 5 mathematics ‘ASSET’ August’10 paper of Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Vidyamandir (Jamnagar) students. Their score cards and answers of selected questions were collected for the study.

It is widely acknowledged that ‘ASSET’ provides very challenging problems and helps students build strong mathematical concepts and reasoning power.

Results and findings
One question each on “straight lines” was selected from each grade, namely 3, 4, and 5. All children attempted these questions. But, some of the primary class students answered wrongly. The observations and findings have been described below question-wise.

The author is a Mathematics teacher at K D Ambani Vidyamandir (Primary School), Reliance Greens, Jamnagar. She can be reached at sinny.mole@ril.com.

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In this instalment of primary pack and in the Classroom Update that follows, we continue the theme begun in the last issue of the magazine – History teaching. It’s especially important that young children begin to appreciate the value of different subjects so that they learn to not devalue one or other as they move up the grades in school. If history (even if it is not called as such) is made interesting and relevant in primary school, it retains its value even when the focus has shifted to marks and scores in high school.

History is about the past. History is about facts, right? Wrong. A better way to look at history would be as not merely the past, nor just facts. It is nothing less than fantasy and one radical way to understand it is to project it into the future.

So, what we are proposing is that one great way to learn and teach history is to get children to:
1. Build history through imagination (rather than facts).
2. Project it into a hypothetical future (what if the event had not happened).
3. Make children imagine that they face the same challenges (as the historical characters did) and get them to resolve the challenges.
4. Also, as a corollary to all of the above, children can predict how our present would have been if any historical event did not happen the way it did.

History, has at best, been either “told” to us, or we were made to act (play – act, storytelling, paintings, etc.). Therefore, there was really NO action. Whatever action was there, was only passive and often forgettable.

However, what can make history really enjoyable is when we are made to inter-act.

The authors run Geniekids, a learning centre in Bangalore that works with children. To know more about their work visit www.geniekids.com.

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For healthy growth and development of the body and mind, children need to be active. They need to learn while playing games. The games should be enjoyable, but at the same time should also help children develop the habits of patience, cooperation, etc. I would like to share with my fellow teachers a few games that I use in my classes. These are enjoyable games that children learn a lot from, and the best part is that they don’t burn a hole in your pocket.

Young children are very observant. As teachers, we should encourage them to sharpen their senses and their minds, so that they become more alert, observant, and thoughtful. Try the following games with your children.

Using leaves

The author is an English language teacher in Delhi Public School, Ahmedabad. She can be reached at nilimaahd@yahoo.co.in.

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Phonics refers to a method of teaching speakers to read and write a particular language. Phonics involves teaching children how to connect the sounds of spoken language to letters or groups of letters (For instance, in English the sound /k/ can be represented by c, k, ck or ch spellings) and to blend the sounds of letters together to produce approximately correct pronunciations of unknown words.

Why Phonics?
Learning the phonetics of a language helps one to speak it properly. On the surface, English seems easy when compared to other languages, after all it has only 26 letters. However, these 26 letters can produce 42 different sounds. Although there are only five vowels, there are 20 different vowel sounds and 24 consonant sounds.

Not surprisingly, this causes difficulties for learners. One problem for pupils is that a single sound may be written in many different ways, and conversely a single letter may possess several different sounds. Unless pupils are aware of these features of English, they will find it difficult to pronounce words.

The author is a teacher at the Calorx Teachers’ University. She can be reached atratnar_p@yahoo.co.in.

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Many moons ago, a colleague substituting in Grade 1 made a dot on the board, and asked students’ what it was. He was inundated with ingenious responses – “A star far, far away”, “The top of A’s head as seen from an airplane”, “Marker saying hello to the board”, “The end of an elephant’s tail” and very few “That’s a dot/point”. He repeated the exercise with his Grade 10 students and got a combination of blank and bewildered looks, appearing to question his IQ with an uncanny unanimity about it being a “dot”. There must be something in the way little children learn that keeps their imagination well nourished and fertile; there must be something that we, adults, do differently to lose perspective of possibilities and become masters of prescribed procedures.

Advocates of play perceive it as a cognitive and affective process, simultaneously stimulating multiple synaptic nerves, making it both a process and a product. As a process, it facilitates individual understanding of skills, concepts, and dispositions; as a product, it is a vehicle for children to demonstrate their understanding of skills, concepts, and dispositions. In the 1970s, Germany decided to ramp-up the academic quotient in the kindergartens at the expense of play. More and more academically oriented kindergartens mushroomed in the early childhood education space. Researchers, in their quest for empirical evidence on the wisdom of such a move, studied 50 children each (up to grade 4) from academically-rich kindergarten and from play-rich kindergartens. It was found that the latter excelled over the former in every domain – physical, emotional, social and intellectual. The findings were compelling enough for the Germans to reverse course.

The author is an international educator and founder of Art of Learning, a Gurgaon-based education consultancy. She can be reached at payal@artoflearning.in.

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