When grammar comes alive
Sheel
“Michael Jackson is dead, ma’am. They said his coffin is made of gold.” That’s Rohit.
“He was a big rock star, ma’am. And he danced. We saw on TV,” says Anirudh.
“We saw it on TV, Anirudh,” I respond.
“Yes, ma’am. We saw it on TV. We saw his children also, ma’am.”
“He had a palace, ma’am. He called it Neverland. Why did he call it Neverland?”
“Have you heard that before? … Neverland?”
“Yes, ma’am… Peter Pan!”
I take lessons for children, 7-10 year olds, in grammar and writing. I find them more interested in happenings in their own lives, and things happening around them. I do not take formal lessons, but we talk, discuss, analyse… and, with a little direction, the necessary learning happens. That particular day, we talked for a little while about Michael Jackson, and each of us kept adding information. The children then wrote a paragraph about him, and we discussed the order in which the sentences should appear. We could also identify successfully, from their own words, the parts of speech that they had used. (We had learned, in some of the previous sessions, to identify words as belonging to a certain part of speech depending on their usage.) All in all, it was a successful lesson.
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A very crisp and highly effective write up. Although Sheel’s concept is not being used in most schools, I remember the concept working very well from my own work with children (I had always liked children to be asked to talk or write about their favourite topics, for instance, an interesting picnic, food item etc. rather than `my school’, `my house’ etc, which is monotonous and boring even to us, adults, as these topics have been given to children without any change since many of us were school kids). When I read the write up, I remebered the middle of past decade, when I had the pleasure of meeting Sheel, although I did not have time to let my staff meet her so that they could be inspired too. I wish curriculum developers and school managements read the write up.
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