Audio: Stories, Rhymes and Conversations for the lessons in the Learner's Book

Class One Textbook: Introductory Note

Hello Teachers1 Welcome to participate in this new approach to teaching and learning in this new millennium. This book has been prepared keeping in mind the requirements of present day children and the latest developments in the teaching and learning of languages. Special care is taken to ensure that the course components are accessible, challenging and enjoyable. A proper understanding of the underlying concepts of the book, we hope, would make your classroom work more effective and a lot of fun for both you and the children you teach.

Language Acquisition

In our system, the children are about 5 to 6 years of age when they join class one. At this young age they can learn any number of languages as easily as they learn their mother tongue. But for this to happen naturally, teachers need to do two important things -

1. Provide lots of exposure to the language in real contexts.

2. Provide opportunities for children to genuinely interact with others using that language.

Whether it is mother tongue or any other language, children need exposure to that language in day-to-day contexts and they should feel the need to exchange information, ideas, opinions and feelings with others, at their own level. Since natural exposure and genuine interaction are necessary for both mother tongue and other languages, learning of a language should begin with oral work wherein the children are exposed to that language and are expected to respond to it in whatever way they can. If the teaching of the language begins with the writing of the letters of the alphabet, they are not using the language for communication. Hence, this book provides practice in Listening & speaking activities in he first five units, i.e. approximately first 100 hours. Reading and writing are gradually introduced thereafter.

The Sequence of Classroom Activities

The activities are so planned to get the children involved in the process of learning a language, enjoy the experience of using the language for various purposes and also develop the social interactive skills necessary for efficient communication. The activities begin with a whole class work and proceeds through group, pair and individual work. This further develops into a pair, group and whole class work.

Whole Class ---------> Group ---------> Pair ---------> Individual ---------> Pair ---------> Group ---------> Whole Class

Thus the children get a chance to learn something by working as part of the whole class, and then they work as part of a small group and then with a close partner before working on their own on a self-learning task. They share this individual work with their partner and then with their group and finally return to the whole class activity wherein their learning is further consolidated. This procedure helps the children learn to handle different types of interactions as well as work individually on specific self-learning tasks.

The activities further aim to develop the skills of co-operation, learning from others, making contribution for others to learn from, observation, expression and self-evaluation of one's own ability in comparison to others'. Moreover, value based education is implicitly integrated in such a way that children internalise good values which promote overall development. The self-learning tasks help them learn how to learn and how to work on their own and start them on a life-long journey of self-development.

The Teacher's Book

The teacher's book gives a comprehensive step-by-step introduction of ways of using the activities included in the learner's book. The pictures and activities in the learner's book are numbered serially and these numbers are mentioned in the teacher's book whenever the picture or activity is discussed. At the end of a paragraph, if a number say 5 is seen, it referes to activity 5 in the learner's book. there are also stories, rhymes and conversations that are part of the oral work. for each unit in the children's book, there are three parts in the teacher's book -

1. a table - an overview of all the activities included and the language practised.

The first two columns list the competencies to be developed in this unit and the language to be practised. Please notice that the competencies are not only language competencies but also environment competencies. The competencies in both these subjects are merged as there is no separate book for Environmental Science.

2. the details - a detailed account of the classroom procedures, stories, rhymes, activities for oral work and sample tests.

3. Learner's book - the actual pages from the learner's book for easy reference.

In the learner's book there are a series of worksheets marked 'Let's Celebrate'. These are based on the festivals we celebrate throughout the year. They should be done by the children just before or after celebrating each festival.

The Learner's Book

There are only pictures related to the stories, conversations and rhymes in the learner's book. there is no written material for at least 5 units, which are meant for oral work. This is to ensure that children listen to the teacher and respond to what the teacher says rather than begin with reading and writing. In the later units gradually reading and writing are introduced. There are blank spaces provided in the book for children to draw and colour. this would make the children develop a feeling that the book is their own as it contains special information about them.

A blank calendar has been printed on the inner sides of the cover pages of the learner's book. Encourage the children to put the appropriate date every day and complete the calendar by the end of the year.

Evaluation

the emphasis is on oral test for the first five units, oral and reading for the next three units and oral, reading and minimum writing for the last four units. There are sample tests provided at the end of fifth, ninth and twelfth units. Too much emphasis should not be placed on the testing of spelling of difficult words. In this first year of learning the language the emphasis should be on oral work and next to that is the ability to read simple words and sentences. There should be very little emphasis on writing at this stage.

Seating Arrangement

Ideally the children should be seated in small groups in a semi-circle for greater interaction and accessibility to teacher. Heavy fixed furniture and overcrowded classroom should be avoided. But for those teachers who have to work with large classes with fixed furniture the following ways of working could be useful.

1. Children can be taken out into the lobby, playground or any available space outside for some of the activities.

2. the furniture could be arranged to create space in the front of the class for role-play, activities involving movement and singing of songs with actions.

3. Even with furniture like heavy benches which are not easy to move, the activities can be done if the teacher plans the work keeping in mind the limitations.

(i) Let two children sitting on one bench work on pair work activities. They can also continue to work on individual tasks without consulting each other.

(ii) For group work the children sitting in the first two can turn back and face the children in the second row to form groups of 4. If 3 children are made to sit on each bench they can work in groups of 6.

(iii) Two benches can be drawn together for children to work in groups of 8 or 12.

(iv) Two or three benches can be drawn together in such a way that the children can face one another as well as face the blackboard.

Repetition Drills

Some amount of mechanical practice at the beginning stages is necessary and children naturally repeat whatever you might say to them in an interesting manner. However, if children are asked to repeat something a number of times the activity may turn out to be monotonous and boring. It is possible to turn the repetition activity as a game and children can be asked to repeat sentences with variations. There are a number of ways this can be done.

(i) Change the volume - ask children to whisper, murmur or shout while repeating something.

(ii) Change the pitch - ask children to repeat with a high or low pitch.

(iii) Change the character - ask children to repeat as if different animals are speaking it, e.g., a squirrel in squeaky voice an elephant in a loud voice, etc.

(iv) Change the emotion - ask the children to repeat the sentences as if they were angry, shy, tired, happy, etc.

Error Correction

Correcting the children's mistakes has to be taken up gently. Usually at this young age children benefit more from exposure than correction of specific errors. they learn to correct their own errors if they listen to the sentences being said by the teacher or other children in the correct manner. Whenever a child makes an error you can repeat the correct sentence naturally, as if it is part of the interaction, without making the child lose self-confidence. It is necessary, in the beginning stages to instill confidence in the children and make them feel that they can talk in English. Hence, even in role-play and other activities whenever children make mistakes you should let the activity be completed, congratulate the children, ask the class to clap for them and then as part of your teaching naturally repeat those sentences wherein problems occurred. This practice requires a lot of patience on the part of the teachers, as they need to play the role of parents dealing with young kids at home. Even when the children learn their mother tongue at hole they do not correct their mistakes unless they want to do so. Researchers have proved that even when parents try to correct the mistakes of their children, they fail to do so till such time as the children are ready to do it on their own.

This is a new way of teaching and we hope that teachers would take it up as a challenge and enjoy working this way and also make the learning of language enjoyable for the children. Above all, we must remember that this book is different in at least two major ways;

1. It combines the earlier subjects of English and Environment, and

2. It provide a considerable amount of time for oral work.

We enjoyed preparing this book for you and we hope you will enjoy using it in class with your children.

Good Luck!

Authors