Sudeshna and Sonali from Shikshamitra visited Swanirvar on 11 November, 2009. Maggie Flannagan, the retired British school teacher, was also present. Total 23 teachers from different schools of North 24 Parganas participated in the workshop. Pre-lunch session
The workshop was divided into two sessions. The morning session started with Sudeshna asking the teachers to fill up a form that contained questions on their class size, total time taken to commute to school, whether teachers can have access to AV medium if they want to, and such like issues.
Based on the questionnaire given to the teachers a few months back, a summary of problem areas were then written down on the blackboard. A brainstorming followed on these. Certain issues came up repeatedly during the brainstorming session.
For Class V , the starting year of secondary schools
• At present 40-60% students can write A – Z in the alphabetical order.
• 20 – 30 % students can read and write small words like cat, bat.
• Teachers are very much bound by the textbook and the obligation to finish the syllabus on time.
• Unit test is a headache that takes up a lot of time and deters the teachers to experiment with the class.
• Huge class size, with an average of 60-70 students per class, is a deterrent to effective teaching.
• Correcting copies of so many students doesn’t leave much time for the teachers to think about innovative teaching.
• Children do not do their homework, in fact most of them do not even open their textbooks once they leave the class. In most of the cases, parents do not take active interest in the studies of their wards.
It was noted that all the problems that the teachers highlighted, are typical of a primary class. They also agreed that if any intervention can make a difference, it can only do in class V when children are still in a malleable stage.
At the end of Class V, the teachers wanted the students to
• speak, write, comprehend English;
• read simple sentences; and
• love/ like the language.
Maggies’s session
The discussion veered towards the use of TLMs (teaching-learning materials). The teachers stated that they use charts, pictures and audio-visual materials (sometimes) in their classrooms.
Maggie then started with her demonstration on how to build up the pre-primary language skills of the students that requires identifying, reading and writing letters of the alphabet. She stated that children could be given letters and asked to make small words like cat, mat, hat, etc. While teaching letters, she mentioned that lower case has to be taught first since that is what we tend to use a lot in real life.
She demonstrated the way social language (What is your name?; How old are you?; Where do you live) can be used in classrooms to enhance the speaking skills of the students.
She also brought to notice the fact that the new English Book of class I published by the government of West Bengal is quite good and the teachers can take quite a few ideas from it for their classrooms.
Post-Lunch session
Maggie’s demonstrations went on for quite some time after lunch. While she was demonstrating, quite a few teachers raised the issue that Maggie’s demonstration is pre-primary teaching. Given the paucity of time and the obligation to finish the syllabus before unit tests, it is not possible for them to go into the kind of methodology that Maggie demonstrated. Interestingly, the teachers failed to see the point that once the student learns the letters it will be easier for the teachers to teach in the higher classes and all the problems that they had earlier mentioned could be arrested to a certain extent.
It was then that the model class plan was given to them with times allotted for all the four aspects of language teaching; viz, speaking, listening, reading and writing. It was told to them that with this structure they would be able to rectify the basic problems within 3 months. However, teachers were not too convinced again because they felt that this would lead to loss in teaching hours and would affect in their finishing of the syllabus.
Sudeshna then mentioned that the 3-month remedy classes would address a lot of issues concurrently. For example, if they know how to read letters, their vocab base will automatically increase, reading will improve and, in general, phobia of the language will go away. She then demonstrated a few TLMs (colour vocab) and it was decided that the next sessions will address the issue of TLM-making as well.
The teachers were then asked to give a feedback. They came up with the following.
Useful ideas
• Importance of group activity
• Use of teaching aids
• Maggie’s method
• Social interaction in class as demonstrated by Maggie
• Learning through games
• Idea of engaging students to make teaching aids
Meaningless ideas
• Forgo syllabus for the period when remedial classes are going on.
• Desist from assigning homework for the first six months.
Follow-up action
After a lot of back and forth, almost 70% of the teachers were convinced that an effort could be made to address the shortcomings of the learners. The next workshop has been fixed for 16 February, 2010. Following are the issues that are likely to be discussed.
• Large classroom and multi-level teaching
• Syllabus-based demo, starting from class V
• What happens to good students when the others are going through the initial remedial programme?
• What does the teacher of class VII-VIII do if s/he gets a learner group who has no idea of letters and who can’t read?
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