Teaching teachers to tone up teaching

Updated on: Thursday, November 17, 2011

While some portions of the Samacheer Kalvi textbooks may seem completely alien and other aspects interesting and innovative, how the material is effectively delivered in a classroom setup is what ultimately matters. For teachers to share their best practices, clear their confusions on the new syllabus and adopt their teaching methodology to deliver the best of what the uniform syllabus has on offer, the Department of School Education is providing an in-service coaching for teachers. A five-day orientation programme in different subjects for all class X teachers of government, government-aided, Chennai Schools and some teachers of matriculation schools got under way in the city on Tuesday.

The teachers discussed how they could engage the students better while imparting the lessons. For students to become familiar with the activities listed in the books such as letter writing or filling bank challans, teachers could take a bank challan to classrooms and fill it in the presence of students, were some of the suggestions made to make learning easy for the students.

Poetry writing was another new area in the Samacheer Kalvi system. E. Sridhar, a Tamil teacher from Hindu Theological Higher Secondary school, Sowcarpet, suggested that students be familiarised with literary discussions and asked to write simple rhyming poems in the classrooms — anything that comes to their mind. Students are interested when a poem is taught with a tune, rather than narrating it out from the textbook, said another resource person.

Slow learners

The resource persons from the School Education Department asked the teachers to pay special attention and motivate slow learners. Students who require help to score the minimum pass percentage should be thorough with questions that require one-word answers, resource persons said. The letter writing section is another area such students can score a few marks, said E.Radhakrishnan, a teacher from Kannada Sanga Higher Secondary School, Ayanavaram.

“Students should be asked to lay emphasis on the right format while writing a letter and not worry too much about the spelling and grammar. Then, they would score at least 50 per cent of the marks,” he added. “Most students in our schools come with a huge baggage. It is our duty to guide such students who come from disturbed families and are under-privileged,” said Mr.Radhakrishnan. Teachers also expressed certain confusions over the material in the books, for instance, they pointed at the contents page in which a particular paragraph has been assigned as the ‘manappadam' section, while on the inside pages another paragraph has been starred. The resource persons helped clarified such dilemma.

However, most teachers expressed concern whether they could do justice to the new syllabus — given the limited working days that the schools are left with. The contents should be reduced for this year so students can thoroughly understand the portions we teach, said teachers. This is also a forum for teachers to discuss ways to conduct classes in a participative learning rather than emphasising rote learning, said S. Nagaraja Murugan, Chief Education Officer, Chennai.

Teaching teachers to tone up teaching

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