INNOVATIVE PRACTICES IN SCHOOLS – Skill Building in the Pre School

Listening is an important skill. Listening involves many subtle functions such as listening to the tone, words, their meaning, emotions expressed, thoughts expressed, gestures, moods and feelings. It also involves recognition and association of sound with particular source and coming to a particular conclusion. Without proper listening a child can not reproduce certain words or sentences accurately. It is observed that small children many a times repeat what adults speak to them to understand. Sometimes they repeat it to themselves to make sense of what is spoken.

So it is necessary that we build some activities to sharpen the listening ability in the children and through listening we must engage thinking and feeling aspects. Exposing the child to silence also is very crucial at this stage as this makes him/her aware of the fact that all the sounds arise and subside in the silence. This helps him to develop the capacity of pure listening where there is no interference from the feelings and thoughts in the form of excitement.

Some suggested activities: 1. Nature walk: – listen to the sounds coming from the nearest source, listen to the sound coming from little farther, listen to the sounds coming from farthest sources, try to reproduce them by making sounds. 2. Listen to the animal sounds and imitate them. 3. Listen to the birds sound and imitate them. 4. Listen to the sound of birds and animals at different time morning and evening, at the time of seeking, in panic and danger, in protecting etc. 5. Listen by closing the eyes and figure out the direction of the source of the sound. 6. Listening to the rustling sound 7. Listen to the higher and lower pitch 7. Reproduce the same 8. Listen to the different sound simultaneously and pick up each one to reproduce. 9. Listen to the different musical instrument and recognize them from their sound only. 10. Listen to the rhythm of any sound and imitate it by clapping. 11. Listen to the Sanskrit alphabets and reproduce them. Here children need to be shown each part of the mouth producing particular kind of sound so that they can reproduce. 12. Listen to the tongue twisters and reproduce them.

INNOVATIVE PRACTICES IN SCHOOLS – Skill Building in the Pre School

Reading and writing are most important life skills that a child gradually acquires proficiency. Most of the schools spend their energy in structured drill such as repeating a rhyme for many times, joining the dots, writing an alphabet many a times so on and so forth. However, in the process we forget one important fact that speaking can not develop without proper listening ability and writing will not come about without proper seeing ability. This leads us to the question of sense development during the early childhood days. When a child engages in an activity S-he develops the senses involved in those activities. However, most of us do not use all the five senses consciously. It has been seen that most of the children spend their time watching television and other electronic gadgets. It only involves seeing and listening. There is hardly any scope for imagination and for any other sense organs. Prolonged exposure to electronic gadgets stunts the growth of senses and damages the development of the brain. Children go to a semi hypnotic state and seek for constant excitement and enjoyment. It also affects their focus and attention span. Earlier in the joint family system child used listen to stories from the scriptures and other sources from their grand parents which helped them to hone their imagination and listening abilities. Casual interaction with the story teller used to tickle their brain and sharpen their questioning and thinking abilities.

So question is can there be a space where child can use all the senses with lot of scope for thinking and imagination? Can the schools create such an ambience without spending much on fancy items? A shift in this direction will facilitate proper growth and save the child from getting his/her childhood stolen.

INNOVATIVE PRACTICES IN SCHOOLS – Skill Building in the Pre School

Pre school kids are exposed to various kinds of activities, mostly playful in nature and they are expected to pick up important life skills while doing them. However, most of the time activities are random in nature and they are picked up according to the availability of the space, resource person and materials. Very little thought is given keeping in mind the developmental process that is taking place in the child. Nursery to kindergarten kids are expected to learn reading and writing skills at the end of the course in India. The emotional and mental difficulties which kids face while coming for the first time to school also plays a crucial role in molding the child into a pre designed shape. However, many kids still survive this assault because of inherent innocence and energy.
In this article I am going to discuss on the preparatory steps that need to be taken before embarking upon building up the reading and writing skills.
1. A child of 2 years 6 months to 3 years and 6 months generally gets admitted to Nursery class. There s-he learns to socialize, play, sing and do some activities. Except Montessori system one seldom comes across a well graded, planned activity which helps in the physical, emotional and mental growth of the child. Take the case of developing the fine motor skills in a child. It’s a well known fact in physiology that fine motor skills develop optimally when the gross motor skills are perfected. This does not mean that both cannot develop concurrently. However, in practice we notice that schools spend very little time in building gross motor skills and they push the child towards fine motor skill activities i.e. writing, coloring, painting and building or constructing. With the coming of electronic gadgets into our homes children are more and more exposed to T.V, multi media and mobile phones. Children find it exciting to use and gradually they get addicted to it. Shifts takes place in their attention span and focus which moves from real world to the virtual world. Less physical activities restrict the development of the gross motor skills in he process fine motor skills also do not develop properly. When child is forced to write in such a condition it affects his/her psychological make up and leaves a scar in his/her psyche. The number of kids showing the symptoms of ADD, dysgraphia and dyslexia is also attributed to mindless practices in the school by some psychologists. According to the Swiss Psychologist Jean piaget child first enters the concrete operational stage in the developmental process. In this stage s-he must be exposed to lot of physical manipulation of objects. Child should spend lots of time with water, sand, soil or nature. S-he should be spending more time in unstructured and structured play which must be challenging and funny.

Role of Home to promote learning capacities

As an educator we thrive on three basic capacities with which the child comes to the class room. These three capacities or qualities are 1. Inherent interest or curiosity in the child to unravel the mystery which tickles his/her mind and appeals to his/her heart. 2. The capacity to pay attention – a state of mind which remains alert and aware for a sustained period of time.  3. The capacity to concentrate –  a state of mind to focus the dispersed thoughts on a given point for a given period of time without distraction. Learning happens when these capacities enables the learner to gather information and manipulate the situation in one’s surrounding.

Interest: Interest in an area in a child is primarily determined by the three elements i.e. nature, nurture and the inherent samskaras (subtle impressions in the psyche) with which the child is born. Interest in an area is shaped by the hereditary and genetic factors (nature) with which the child is born. Whereas the nurture part includes the surrounding, environment and cultural inputs that a child is exposed in his/her early childhood. However, at times the inherent samskaras take a precedent and guides the child to take advantage of the situation in which he/she is born and the so called road blocks are manipulated and used for one’s advantage or growth. We see these phenomena in the life of many great personalities who had used the so called road blocks in their life to their advantage.

As an educator one has to take into consideration all the three factors in order to guide the child for his/her flowering. In the growing up process the child requires food for his/her body, emotions and mind. If the child gets adequate food (physical, emotional and mental) which can be called as growth need, then he/she grows up naturally. In case there is a deficiency at the time of growing up then the child comes to the school with the deficiency need. The educator’s responsibility is to identify the needs and create an environment which will provide and sustain the child’s food for growth in a healthy manner.

A growing up child exhibits gradual development in the capacity of sustained attention in various kind of play. Play remains the most important activity along with listening to the stories. Playing in the sand pit, with water, with colors absorbs the child and helps him/her to develop the capacity to enhance the attention span in a natural way.

In order to support the child in his/her growth we must first understand what is attention and concentration.

What is attention? Is it a process of mind where mind is not focused on any particular concept, ideas or thought yet remains aware of what is happening or not happening? Does it involve registering, recording and recognizing process? What role does this faculty of mind play in the process of learning? Is it passive in nature or active? What are the qualities of the mind which operates from an attentive state? These are the important questions for an educator and people engaged in learning. One can learn about this by observing one’s own mind.

Similarly, what is concentration? Is it just the opposite of the process mentioned in the questions related to attention? What is the importance of this faculty in the learning process? Is it a faculty which complements the faculty mentioned above or it inhibits it? Why distraction must be avoided in a concentrated state? How does it affect the flow of energy?

How do the aforementioned two faculties affect our thinking and decision making abilities in our daily life?

All our senses function optimally when our mind is either attentive or concentrated. In a class room situation a child learns more effectively if she/he is attentive and concentrated. If the child is interested on the concerned topic then one notices certain degree of absorption in the topic.

This capacity to gather one’s attention on one particular topic enables the learner to learn but all this capacity develops first in the home environment. With the introduction of electronic gadgets, (TV, mobile, laptop etc) the capacity to remain attentive and focused getting adversely affected. The general attention span among the young children and young adults appears to be quite short. Schools with higher teacher student ratio are not in a position to help each and every  child according his/her needs and capacity to develop attention span is left to chance. So it is quite crucial for the parents to nurture these ability at home in the early phases of growth through planned manner. At times parents need to play a negative role of preventing the disturbing factors from affecting the child’s concentration and attention capacities. An environment of peace, calm and stillness can be of help in the early days which can be consciously created by choosing appropriate activities. A space for silence, prayer, puja, music and painting, chanting, walk in the nature by paying attention to the details helps a great deal. Chattering of the thoughts usually gets suspended when the mind encounters something surprising or when one develops a sense of wonder. Children generally have this sense of wonder yet while growing up this ability to relate with the environment through a newness of mind gets pushed back by mechanical approach. In our modern world this capacity is diminishing quite early among the kids and we see a bored lot who demand to be entertained at the sensory level out of a compulsive habit.

Breaking an old pattern, introducing an element of surprise and moving beyond the appearance we can consciously bring into our interaction some freshness so that our relationship with the child remains in a state of steady alertness and attentiveness.