Dear teachers

How delhi teachers are trying to address the huge gap between the student
contexts and the text books.... comments welcome

regards
Guru
source -
http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/delhi-government-schools-teachers-smart-study-pronunciation-education-fun-2872300/

20,000 govt school teachers in Delhi involved in finding ways to make
students learn the right lessons, and have fun

Grappling with students who barely know their alphabets in order, teachers
find it an uphill task to go beyond the narrative and explain the didactic
tone.

Written by Sweta Dutta | New Delhi | Published:June 24, 2016 2:35 am

“Once upon a time, there lived in Japan a young boy with his parents.
Although he worked hard, day and night cutting wood, he could not earn much
to satisfy need of his parents. It was cold season and his old father was
unable to bear the cold so he wished he could have sake… but a poor man
like Taro could not afford to buy the drink.”

As Kadambari Lohia, a Class VI English teacher of a Delhi government
school, reads out ‘Taro’s Reward’ — a chapter from the NCERT textbook —
students in her class stare blankly at her. Even as the textbook suggests
Kadambari pronounce sake as ‘saake’, she silently debates how the students,
who were taught to pronounce ‘S’ as sa just a few days ago, would tackle a
sudden deviation.

The story of Taro has often come up as a challenge to teachers. Grappling
with students who barely know their alphabets in order, teachers find it an
uphill task to go beyond the narrative and explain the didactic tone.

“There is an yawning gap between the learning level of students and the
difficulty level of the prescribed NCERT textbooks and this makes teaching
a big challenge in government schools,” explains Kadambari, flanked by
seven other English teachers from different government schools,
brainstorming over creating new supplementary material for students and
manuals for teachers to bridge this gap.

The exercise, initiated by Delhi government’s Directorate of Education and
involving 20,000 trained graduate teachers from Class VI to VIII, draws
from their own classroom experiences.

Over the past month, 500 batches of teachers have been brainstorming not
just to simplify textbooks for students, but also to draw up a manual for
teachers to ‘make sense’ of them while teaching. The material will be
printed and used in classrooms across government schools from July. The
initiative comes with the AAP government prioritising education and
allocating a lion’s share of the state budget in revamping infrastructure
and introducing more extra-curricular activities.

“Over the years, we have seen students floundering because their level of
understanding is far below the textbooks imposed on them. Teachers have
repeatedly complained of this and hence we thought we needed to involve
them in the process,” says Shailendra Sharma, principal advisor to director
(education).

Though the workshops have meant more work during the summer break, teachers
are not complaining. “We have to teach in the classroom and we know what
works for students. We should teach them what they understand and not what
the textbook wants us to teach. This is the first time teachers are
involved in the process of drafting study material,” says Deepti Chawla,
another English teacher.

Tarun Bhasin, a Social Studies teacher, and his colleagues draw up riddles
and other play-way methods to explain topics like the solar system and
environment. “Instead of making students learn by rote what environment
means, if we take them out to green areas and ask them to observe and write
down whatever they saw, the impact is much more,” explains Bhasin.

IT for Change, Bengaluru
www.ITforChange.net

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