Teaching Methodologies (English)

CONTENTS

Confidential 2

Our Observations on Children from Ordinary Schools

Levelfield School Methodology

ROTE-LEARNING VS CONCEPTS: ENGLISH (LKG/UKG)

Confidential 3

What kids can do

Read familiar words – like APPLE, ELEPHANT

What kids often cannot do

Decode simpler, but unfamiliar words (HELP, SAD)

Orally answer simple yes/no questions like:

There are two suns in the sky

Your father is here in this room

Listening comprehension, and ability to decode words are the first steps

ROTE-LEARNING VS CONCEPTS: ENGLISH (I - IV)

Confidential 4

What kids can do

Read textbook passages which have been taught in the class

Read paragraphs, but without comprehension

What kids often cannot do

Read unseen passages independently, with comprehension

Read books independently

Without independent reading ability, no further learning is possible

THE MAIN PROBLEM:

Confidential 5

A focus on syllabus and textbooks as opposed to

real skill development

Listening comprehension

Reading

Speaking

Writing (Independent expression)

CONTENTS

Confidential 6

Our Observations on Children from Ordinary Schools

Levelfield School Methodology

A FEW KEY BELIEFS

Confidential 7

Belief No 1: In the beginning, learning is a

sequential process

(that means, when students come without any knowledge, you

cannot start teaching them everything together. We need to teach

first things first.)

STEP 1: Learning to understand by listening

STEP 2: Learning to speak | Learning to read

STEP 3: Learning to express oneself by writing

A FEW KEY BELIEFS

Confidential 8

Belief No 2: A graded and continuous exposure

is needed to build basic skills

(Instead of reading 5 stories in a textbook many times over, you will learn to

read better by reading 1000 stories in a year! But they have to be finely

graded, though)

This makes learning process almost independent and subconscious

However, the challenge is to design so many graded activities

Exercise 1

Exercise 2

Exercise 3

Exercise 1

Exercise 500

A FEW KEY BELIEFS

Confidential 9

Belief No 3: Follow the natural process of

learning languages

(Think how you learnt your mother tongue)

We learn a language through a lot of ‘listening’.

When we read and listen to a language a lot, we get a ‘sense’ of what is

correct and what is wrong – no amount of grammar exercises can be a

substitute for extensive hearing and reading

THE FIRST FEW MONTHS…

Confidential 10

A singular focus on listening comprehension

Commands and Instructions

Yes/No based on pictures of objects

Things around us

Things we eat

Things that go

Things we wear

Animals-birds-insects

Fruits-vegetables

Storytelling

Culture building is very important in this stage – no mother tongue

should be allowed inside the school. We do not allow use of mother

tongue by the ayahs and non-teaching staff either

COMMANDS AND INSTRUCTIONS

Confidential 11

Takes 2-4 weeks, depending on age Initially, simple instructions accompanied by gesture

come here, stand up, sit down, go out etc

Later, a little more difficult, involving the objects around, and

basic verbs

Touch the wall, stand near the door, open your bag

Finally, elaborate activities to learn more sophisticated

instructions

Instructions related to forming a queue (concepts of front,

behind, between)

Ball-picking activity (concepts of give, take, keep, under,

on, numbers)

Raise your hand activity (if you are a boy, if you are near

the window, if you like milk etc.)

BASIC WORD PICTURES

Confidential 12

Word recognition based on pictures, not based on mother

tongue

Things around us

Things we eat

Things that go

Things we wear

Animals-birds-insects

Fruits-vegetables

Basic verbs

Questions should not be open-ended

Can we see a chair in the classroom?

How many legs are there?

We sit on it, or stand on it?

Are you sitting on a chair?

Chair is big or a bed is big?

STORYTELLING

Confidential 13

Simple fables and folktales can be used Use simple vocabulary

Use direct narration

Use ‘visual’ words rather than abstract

Act it out

If the character in the story is angry, your voice is angry

If the character is whispering, you also whisper

There should not be any logical gap

Explain concepts (e.g. rich/poor) along the way

TYPICAL QUESTIONS AT THIS STAGE FROM PARENTS

Confidential 14

We do not get to know what happens at school!

Notebooks are empty!

What about textbooks?

READING BEGINS ONLY AFTER BASIC LISTENING

COMPREHENSION

Confidential 15

STEP 1: Word Reading: Learning phonetic rules (sounds of letters)

STEP 2: Sentence Reading: Automatic reading of top-200 frequent words

STEP 3: Paragraph Reading: Short paragraphs, 400 headwords, readability:1.0

STEP 4: Short story: 2-3 page stories, 1000 headwords, readability: 1.0-2.0

STEP 5: Reading rewritten classics, non-fiction: 40-50 page stories

STEP 6: Independent reading of books and magazines

Step 1 and 2 to be achieved in pre-primary grades (LKG & UKG), and

steps 3, 4, 5, 6 by grades I, II, III, and IV

STEP 1 (LKG): PHONETIC RULES

Confidential 16

The first steps are important

Should we teach names or sounds?

Should we teach capital letters or small?

Should we teach in sequence?

400 most popular

words

Phonetic

words

Non-phonetic

words

Sight words

STEP 2 (UKG) : SENTENCE READING

Confidential 17

A large number of sentence level exercises

Sentence matching (high-payoff)

Fill in the blanks

Multiple choice

Arrange in order

Kloze test

Objective: Automatic reading of most frequently

occurring words (top 200, and top 400)

These exercises involve choosing, so strategies

are needed to prevent guessing

There are many challenges to create such a large number of exercises

EXERCISE DESIGN : VERSION 1

Confidential 18

I can read.

1. I want a ball.

2. Give me a book.

3. This is my mom.

EXERCISE DESIGN : VERSION 2

Confidential 19

This is not your book.

1. I want to read.

2. You took it from me.

3. Some books are fat.

STEP 3 (CLASS I): PARAGRAPH READING

Confidential 20

Simple stories, vocabulary limited 400 words Readability score of 0-1

Comprehension tested by fill-in the blanks within passage,

yes/no questions, arrange in order

Questions need to be phrased well so that they cannot be

answered without full comprehension

Limited vocabulary – should not stumble

They do more than 100 such stories before

moving to the next step Reading top 400 words becomes fast and automatic

Again, it is difficult to create so many stories with simple vocabulary and

low readability

DIFFERENCE IN READABILITY:

STORY WITH READING LEVEL 1.0

Confidential 21

I am Jinni. I am a small girl.

Every morning, I wake up, wear my school-dress and go to

school. I come back around twelve. Then I have my lunch.

My mother cooks the lunch. She normally cooks very well. I like

the food she cooks. But today, the food was not tasty. I disliked it.

I did not feel like finishing it.

I asked my mother, “Why was the food not tasty today?”

She answered, “I did not find time to cook it today.”

I said, “Why? What happened?”

She replied, “I was not well. I had to go to a hospital.”

I said, “Who cooked the food then?”

She said, “We got the food from a hotel.”

Confidential 22

I am Jinni. I am a small girl.

Every morning, I go to school. I come back at noon. Then I have

my lunch.

My mother cooks the lunch. She cooks well. I like the food she

cooks. But today, the food was not good. I did not like to eat it. I

did not finish my food.

I asked my mother, “Why was the food so bad today?”

She said, “I did not cook it today.”

I said, “Why?”

She said, “I was not well. I had to go to a hospital.”

I said, “Who cooked the food then?”

She said, “We got the food from a hotel.”

DIFFERENCE IN READABILITY:

STORY WITH READING LEVEL 0.0

Confidential 23

I am Jinni. I am a small girl.

Every morning, I go to school. I come back at noon. Then I have

my lunch.

My mother cooks the lunch. She cooks well. I like the food she

cooks. But today, the food was not _________. I did not like to eat

it. I did not finish my food.

I asked my mother, “Why was the food so bad today?”

She said, “I did not cook it today.”

I said, “Why?”

She said, “I was not well. I had to go to a _________.”

I said, “Who cooked the food then?”

She said, “We got the food from a hotel.”

FILL-IN-THE-BLANKS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE

PASSAGE TO TEST UNDERSTANDING

STEP 4 (CLASS II): READING SHORT STORIES

Confidential 24

Level 2 words are introduced gradually at this stage

Readability score of 1.0-2.0

Stories are not picked from any book directly, but

rewritten by us

Fables and folktales from around the world mined

Over a year, they read 1000 pages of reading

material, carefully graded, and independently

STEP 5 (CLASS III): READING LONG STORIES

Confidential 25

At this stage, vocabulary expands to about 1500-

2000 words At this level, our materials have readability score of 2.0-4.0

Multiple choice questions, yes-no questions with lots of twists, to

test sophisticated understanding

They read a lot of children’s classics, rewritten by us Gulliver’s Travels, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Prince and the Pauper,

The Little Princess, The Secret Garden, The Railway Children,

Robinson Crusoe, Oliver Twist, Charlotte’s Web, The Trumpet of

the Swan, David Copperfield, Frankenstein etc.

They start reading non-fiction too

STRATEGIES TO CREATE READING MATERIALS

Confidential 26

Sources for 2-3 page stories Folktales from all around the world

To be rewritten in simple language

Within the limited vocabulary

Easy sentence construction

Rewritten children’s classic Do not abridge – just simplify the language

Preserve all dialogue, emotions, plot elements

Give them the full book, not a small part of it

Graded reading materials available in the market too

STRATEGIES TO CREATE AND EVALUATE QUESTIONS

Confidential 27

Fill-in-the blanks within the passage Spelling not an immediate priority

Yes-no or multiple choice questions Prevent guessing – if one or two are wrong, do not tell the child

which ones are wrong – ask them to re-read the whole story

Do not ask fact-based questions, ask questions that

test understanding

Questions are not an end in itself – they are diagnostic tools for the

teachers to see if the students are reading diligently and understanding

STEP 6: THE OCEAN OF BOOKS!

Confidential 28

After a lot of independent reading of rewritten

material, and some assisted reading, they are ready

to read books Not any book can be given

Comic strips are also useful for a start (Tinkle, Amar Chitra Katha)

Most books in the market do not fit the bill A lot of pictures and large font do not make a children’s book

If the school can give its students the gift of independent reading, half

the job of imparting learning is done!

TYPICAL QUESTIONS AT THIS STAGE

Confidential 29

Why this excessive focus on reading?

When will my child start writing?

When will he study history, geography etc?

TEACHING WRITING

Confidential 30

What writing is not… Handwriting

Copying from books

Writing memorized answers

Dictation

Spelling practice

What writing is… The ability to express your ideas independently through writing

It is actually quite a difficult activity – something even most adults

have not mastered

Full-fledged writing activities start after students have developed the

ability to read books independently. We believe ability to write comes

from a lot of reading, and an ability to express oneself through speaking

WRITING TECHNIQUE 1: PICTURE STORYBOARDS

Confidential 31

WRITING TECHNIQUE 1: PICTURE STORYBOARDS

Confidential 32

WRITING TECHNIQUE 2: EXPANSION OF POINTS

Confidential 33

I like school

• Friends

• Play

• Tiffin-time, indoor games

• After-school, outdoor

• Fun things

• Story-telling

• Videos and cinema

• Library

• No scolding

WRITING TECHNIQUE 3: CONVERT YOUR READING

MATERIAL INTO WRITING MATERIAL

Confidential 34

I am Jinni. I __________(be) a small girl.

Every morning, I go to school. I come back at noon. Then I have

my lunch.

My mother ___________ (cook) the lunch. She cooks well. I like

the food she cooks. But today, the food _________ (be) not good.

I did not like to eat it. I _______________ (not, finish) my food.

I asked my mother, “Why was the food so bad today?”

She said, “I did not cook it today.”

I said, “Why?”

She said, “I was not well. I had to go to a hospital.”

I said, “Who ___________ (cook) the food then?”

She said, “We __________ (get) the food from a hotel.”

OTHER WRITING TEACHING TECHNIQUES

Confidential 35

Rewriting easy stories Get the class to read a small story like the previous page story for

2 mins

Ask them to rewrite it

Peer review Project somebody’s writing on the screen with a projector

Review it in front of the whole class

Ask the class to comment on it too

This is better than reviewing everybody’s output individually

THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER IN THE ENGLISH CLASS

Confidential 36

More like a doctor, than a presenter In all the reading activities, the role of the teacher is to diagnose

reasons why somebody is not comprehending

Is he lazy, and not reading well?

Are there words he did not understand, and did not ask?

Did he miss some twist in the story?

Is the question phrased in a difficult way?

In writing activities, the same thing holds

Is the child ready for writing at all?

What type of writing activity is appropriate for a child now?

Does he have a problem with writing conventions or writing

logic?

MISTAKES TO AVOID

Confidential 37

Translation to and from the mother tongue

Memorizing textbooks

A focus on copywork, dictation, handwriting as

opposed to reading and listening

Excessive focus on grammatical exercises early on