SEMISTER 1

ASSIGNMENTS:

Describe at least 2 activities you could do in a classroom to facilitate a child’s learning during the pre-operational and concrete operational stage. (300 words)
Pre-operational stage: The preoperational stage ranges from about ages 2 to 7 (Piaget, 1951, 1952). The child in this stage is pre (before) operations. This means the child cannot use logic or transform, combine or separate ideas.
The child's development consists of building experiences about the world through adaptation and working towards the (concrete) stage when it can use logical thought. During the end of this stage children can mentally represent events and objects (the semiotic function), and engage in symbolic play. 1. Smell Games: Present a collection of strong smelling items such as oranges, roses, mint or vanilla for preoperational stage activities involving the senses. Have the kids try to guess the item by just using the sense of smell. 2. Sense of Touch: Similar to the sense of smell games, gather together items such as fabric, leaves, mud, sandpaper and cotton balls. Have children describe how the item feels. You can have the child sort items according to touch as well. For instance, have the kids group the rough, soft or squishy feeling items into piles. Ask the children to find all the soft feeling items in the group and pull them out. These preoperational stage activities use the senses and the child's ability to sort and make distinctions among objects. Concrete Operational stage: Piaget (1954) considered the concrete stage a major turning point in the child's cognitive development, because it marks the beginning of logical or operational thought. The child is now mature enough to use logical thought or operations (i.e. rules) but can only apply logic to physical objects.
Children in the concrete operational stage are typically ages 7 to 11. They gain the abilities of conservation (number, area, volume, orientation) and reversibility. Their thinking is more organized and rational. They can solve problems in a logical fashion, but are typically not able to think abstractly or hypothetically.
Seriation: This activity develops the classification level. The ability to stimuli along the quantitative dimensions. This gives the child the ability to create the relationship between things. Eg: Arranging a set of pencils in a chronological order or arranging the number rod in series from 1 to 10 in chronological order.
Shapes: This activity deals with the classification level. Take different shapes like square, rectangle, circle, semicircle, cone etc. Shuffle them, switch them then ask the child to place the correct shape in the correct box. This activity will let the child know the shapes and colour.

2. Consider any four social and emotional competencies. How would you encourage and develop each of these areas?
Social and equal compentence in young children:
Early childhood experiences set the stage for later health, well-being and learning. It is a period of great opportunity as well as vulnerability.In the past, most of the focus was on building young children’s academic skills in an effort to ensure they were prepared for school. Parents support healthy social and emotional development in children when they model how to express and communicate emotions effectively, self regulate and make friends. A child's social and emotional competence is crucial to sound relationships with family, adults, and peers.Social and emotional development may obstruct healthy relationships. Early identification of such delays and early assistance for children and parents can provide support for family relationships and sustain and appropriate development. However, in recent years a growing body of research has demonstrated the strong link between young children’s social-emotional competence and their cognitive development, language skills, mental health and school success.
Following are the four social and equal competence:

1. self-efficacy - believing that one is capable of performing an action 2. self-regulation/self-control - following rules, controlling impulses, acting appropriately based on the context. 3. patience - learning to wait 4. communication skills - understanding and expressing a range of positive and negative emotions.

Everyday teachers informally model and teach students pre social behaviours. I would infuse social skills training into daily instructions while the children’s experiencing them t model, coach, prompt, monitor and positively reinforce skills such as sharing, taking turns, problem solving, encouragement etc.

* Increase student awareness of appropriate skills by modelling, giving positive attention and reinforcing students display of pro social behaviours both in and out of the classroom settings. * Provide corrective feedback in a manner that is neither judgemental nor embarrassing but rather focuses on teaching positive social skills. * Help children weak in social skills by carefully pairing them with positive role models and assigning them to groups that will be more supportive . we may also need to facilitate friendship for certain students who tend to be socially isolated.

6) Plan an activity based lesson using any Two of the four skills (Reading/ Listening/Writing or Speaking ). Kindly note that you have to select any One subject ( for your lesson plan) from the list given below: 1. Math 2. Science 3. Language Your lesson can incorporate PPT, music, rhymes, story etc and the lesson should cater to the young learners’ class · Mention age. · The time frame for the lesson needs to be within 30-40 minutes. · Use variation of activities appropriate for the selected age group · The lesson flow needs to have clear-cut steps · Please end with a recapitulation activity in the form of a worksheet/song/game. You may attach the worksheet/ or the material used with your answer sheet/ answer. Please use the Primary lesson plan format to fill in the lesson outline. 3 Lesson Plan Topic : Subject: | Level/ class : No of students: | Time: | Teaching aids : | Aims of the lesson:- (a) Main focus /Target to be achieved: (b) General aim: | Concepts introduced: To learn English well, students need a variety of language experiences organised by you. The National Focus Group on Teaching of English (NCERT, 2006) says that a single textbook used over a year is ‘inadequate’ to learn and teach English effectively. But in The Child’s Language and the Teacher (Resource 2), Professor Krishna Kumar writes that this is what usually happens in our schools: Every teacher in our country is expected to ‘cover’ the textbook; that is, she is expected to finish each lesson given in the textbook one by one, doing the exercises that the textbook offers, giving homework concerning each lesson, and ensuring that children have a mastery over the content of each lesson. There is no doubt that these expectations are counterproductive as far as the teaching of language is concerned.Young students love to play and use their imaginations. They like new experiences, of course, but they also like routines where they can have repeated opportunities to practise new skills and ideas. They also thrive on variety. All of these factors mean that you should be ready to plan a range of activities around any text that you choose for your English class. There is so much you can do with a story, poem or even a newspaper article. Any text that you choose for English lessons can be the starting point for helping students to develop English language skills through a variety of activities linked to this text. Activity 2: Planning activities around a text There are many English language activities, such as games, craftwork, role play or peer discussions, you can organise for young students around any text. For older students you can plan literacy activities such as writing alternative endings, dialogues and play scripts, book-making, grouping words with the same sounds, finding information, classifying 5 2 Creating language learning opportunities words and phrases, labelling pictures, picture description, gap-filling, completing sentences, and writing a review. It is very important to give students clear instructions when organising an activity in class so that they understand what is required in terms of their behaviour and their outputs. It is good practice to repeat instructions and encourage students to repeat them to confirm their understanding. Therefore, when you plan activities from a text, you should consider how you are going to give instructions and recognise that you have opportunities to practise and speak English for yourself in this role. Read Resource 1 for an example of the range of activities you can plan from a single, simple story. As you read, note how the activities reinforce: . the learning of common nouns and simple verbs in English . sentences and phrases in English that recur in the story. |

Activity 3: Brainstorming around a text ‘Brainstorming’ is a technique used to produce a variety of ideas. The focus is on rapidly generating as many ideas as possible without being critical about any of them. People who participate in a brainstorm should feel free to contribute as many thoughts and ideas as they can, with other’s thoughts often sparking another idea. These ideas should not be discussed until the end of the process and all ideas (no matter how bizarre or irrelevant) should be recorded. When the brainstorm is complete, there can be a discussion of what emerged and possibly some ordering or prioritising of the different ideas. Brainstorming is a technique that encourages everyone to get involved in a task and generates a rich variety of outcomes. For this activity, use the short story below or choose one from your own English textbook.
Raja called Shyama to come and play with him. Shyama said that he had to work and could not play. Raja went to a field with a ball. Raja saw honey bees and called them to play. The honey bees said they could not play as they had to work. He then saw ants. Raja called out, ‘Ants! Ants! Come let us play!’ ‘No, we cannot play. We have to work,’ said the ants. Raja went home. He helped his father at work. Father said, ‘You are a good boy.’ Raja felt happy. With several colleagues, brainstorm and list possible activities based on the story of Raja’s search for playmates. Think about activities that might involve the following elements: * crafts , * games , * drama, * dialogue or role plays , * reading , * writing, * speaking and * listening.

When you have generated a list of ideas, discuss them in more detail together, considering their relevance, their practicality and their potential to be used to teach English. Decide on up to three activities that you consider most likely to implement – some of these activities could well combine different elements.
Discussion
Here is what a group of Class III teachers thought of for the story of Raja
Craft activity: Make insect and animal masks. Drama/role play: Act out the dialogue, adding other animals and friends of Raja using the masks made in the craft activity. Reading: Read the story aloud together from the chalkboard or the textbook, looking at the sentences ‘Come let us play’ and ‘No, we cannot play’. Substitute and read together other words in the sentences, such as ‘Come let us dance’, ‘Come let us cook’ or ‘Come let us sing’, and ‘No, we cannot dance/cook/sing’. Writing: Draw a series of scenes from the story with speech bubbles and write in the dialogues.

Think of other simple stories like ‘Raja’ that you could use in your classroom. To help you, Resource 1 gives you some ideas to try out with a different story, ‘The Puri Boy’. You will also find Resource 2 (adapted from Krishna Kumar) useful in planning speaking and listening activities: games like ‘What Did You See?’ and ‘Guessing the Right Picture’ are easily adapted to any story or English textbook lesson. When you have chosen a story and thought of some activities, try out your ideas with your colleagues. Take their feedback and revise your ideas, if need be. You will be asked shortly to take an idea that you have generated and make a lesson plan to use it with your class.