Building Holistic Activity-Based Learning
Environment
for
Early years (3-8)
The
Oxford University Pressorganized a webinar on 23rd April 2020 on, ‘Building
Holistic Activity-Based Learning Environment for Early years (3-8)’, through a webinar
and the Spokesperson was Mrs. Sonia Relia. She has a vast experience of
more than 30 years as an early school trainer and teacher facilitator. It was
attended by Ms. Natasha Sharma. Mrs. Neeraj Sharma, Mrs. PriyaParhak, Mrs.
Jyoti Yadav, Mrs. Bhawna Verma, Mrs. DeepaliDhingra. Mrs. ShuchiMathur, Mrs. Usha
Chauhan, Mrs. Bharti Pokhriyal, Mrs. PriyaMehrotra Mrs. Neelam Nanda and Mrs. Neha Arora.
The
focus of the webinar was to enable the teachers and mothers to do activities
with the children with minimum available things and zero wastage during the
lockdown period, as we do not have much resources at our disposal. She said
that we can teach the concepts like small-big, thick- thinor less and more
easily with the things available in the kitchen. Also in EVS, rather than
teaching the names of fruits and vegetables and asking them to rote learn them,
it will be more functional to teach them life skills like personal hygiene,
good manners, importance of cleanliness,importance of nature, perseverance of
trees etc. through easily depicted stories with the help of household objects.
She further suggested that flashcards can be made with the help of pictures cut
from old, used books. They can be made with help of sheets/cards not bigger
than 10 by 10 cm, decorated with the help of things like chart papers or any
coloured paper, ice -cream sticks or anything else easily available at home.
The major stress was on learning by doing as that stays with the children for a
longer period of time and also discourages them to just copy and rote learn
things.
Talking about the teaching learning
resources, she said that when we give too many options to the children, we
actually make them more restless. This distracts them and confuses them. Too
many options can never be helpful in makingchildren alert and mindful. She said
that the very basic tools like a 'dafli' or a 'kartal' can be used to deliver
lessons with great impact. According to her, the purpose of teaching should be
the concept that needs to be taught and not the lavish display of equipment
used.
Shealso
stressed upon the importance of music in the process of teaching and learning
and said that music is very important at the kindergarten level and stories
or any topic told in small jingles leave
a lifelong impact and impression on the minds of the children. In this regard
she also talked about Kinoline which is a
system
that works with low budgets and large groups using simple activity kits and
resources which are easily accessible to teachers.
Here
every letter stands for itself like
K
-stands for Knowledge and information
I
-stands for Ideas
N
-stands for Nail it!! and identify key areas
O
-stands for Organise and plan
L
-stands for Limited budget
E
-stands for Environment building
A
-stands for Apply - do - learn
R
-stands for Reinforcement and resilience
N
-stands for Now!!! Change Now!!!
She
said that if children are given different space for everything like activity
area, story area etc, it also has its own impact on their learning.
Talking
about phonics she stressed upon the fact that relation between the sounds and
symbols is very important. We cannot teach a child to write before being able
to read and he cannot read if he has never been introduced tothe letters in the
form of pictures and things related to them. All this in-turn makes a child an impressive
writer.
Overall, it was a great
experience and a very refreshing one as well. We got to learn several new
things and we would like to thank our Principal
for giving us this opportunity.