Experiments with Teaching English

One of the ways in which we have attempted to reinforce the curriculum is through designing lesson plans for each subject and implementing them in the LI classrooms such that a literate and creative environment is nurtured in the classroom and the relevant kind of knowledge and experience is transferred. The curriculum introduced has been adapted from the National Curriculum Frameowrk (NCF) 2005 and the lessons have been designed, to some extent, based on the NCERT textbooks taught in the schools. As a result, one of the learning outcomes kept in mind while designing the curriculum, in the context of the ongoing experiment, is to retain the children in mainstream education system.

Lesson Plans for basics of language, to be covered over a period of 24 days, have been discussed with teachers at bothe centres. Both Mehjabeen (teacher at Kardampuri) and Shama (teacher at Seemapuri) were asked to go through the material and explain what they could understand. For instance, in Mehjabeen's class, based on her comfort level, she was asked to first do a small demo before she could begin the lessons in the classroom such that support could be provided right away wherever there were gaps while teaching in class. Given her ability and pace it was decided that instead of half an hour per batch, as proposed in the time table earlier, she would take her time and focus on doing one lesson plan for one and half hours per batch every day. In the remaining half an hour while the children do their homework, she would utilize that time reading library books thus getting an opportunity to improve upon her language skills. As per this she was asked to start reading any four English books.

These lesson plans are also being used by Chintan in their centres and have been previously used y several NGOs with whom LearningInq has consulted.