CHENNAI : In today’s education models, one can see tables, chairs, whiteboards, markers, and a projector displaying visual content on a digital board. Walking into a similar set-up at Presidency Girls Higher Secondary School recently, I noticed pictures of short and long vowels projected, and ‘ee’ and ‘ai’ words written in black on the board.
Teaching the students is Pradeepa, a trainer from Jolly Futures. But the students here are the teachers of the school, attending the second half of the Jolly Phonics training programme, focussing on teaching first and second class students. This programme was initiated by Christopher Jolly, founder, and CEO of Jolly Learning Ltd., in third-world countries. With 50 trainers throughout India, the model is implemented here by Gomathi SV, the project manager. In Tamil Nadu, 585 schoolteachers are a part of this initiative.
The programme comprises four sessions a day for two days. “There is no set agenda on what to teach after what. The teachers themselves ask and learn. We are here to guide them,” says Pradeepa. Here, the school staff learn the 42 phonics, letters, and words in the English language through actions, singing, and dancing. One of the teachers, Chandralekha, mentoring class 1 students, says, “We are learning from the basics and are delivering the same to our children (students). First standard kids are reading and spelling out 70-odd words and this makes me happy.”
Every sound, vowel, and letter is associated with an action — hands open and placed closer to the head is ‘e’ sound and when lifted above is ‘ee’. “It is not the traditional way of teaching A,B,C, and D. But through sounds ‘aa’, ‘ba’, and ‘caa’. In this way, the students know from where the letters originate and can differentiate the sounds of letters ‘c’ and ‘k’, and ‘d’ and ‘b’,” shares Gomathi.
After learning phonics in the first half of the training, in this programme they learnt how to form words. The sessions also come with an activity kit that includes books for schoolchildren, where they could practice writing the letters and words and read them out loud, and boxes for drawing and colouring. Each book takes three months to complete. Hence, the two halves of the training sessions are conducted three months apart.
While the ultimate target is kids, Jolly Futures concentrates on the teachers. It collaborates with different state governments with its training programmes and puts them into practice in government-run schools free of cost. “We are set in almost every district of the state and now the government has taken up publication of the material books that we provide to the kids,” she shares.
To value oneself in this competitive world, every individual must be equipped with equal resources. Here, it means, education. “When the kids are provided with the same level of education, they will not be diffident and can face any challenges thrown at them,” she says. Now that letters and words have reached the kids, the next step is to take them on a ride driven by language grammar and its rules.