Activities to develop interest, engagement and love of learning for the English language | Success story | Afiya Pasware

 Activities to develop interest, engagement and love of learning for the English language

 “What we learn with pleasure, we never forget.” – Alfred Mercier

Alfred’s thought about learning made me think, how useful it would be to apply this thought in my work setting through some creative and fun learning activities. I am, Afiya Pasware, working as an upper primary teacher in Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Vidyala, situated in Dighi- Maharashtra. My job role includes teaching English and social-studies to the students of grade 5^th – 7^th. Before I start sharing my ideas about teaching English, let’s see why we need to learn English at the first place. Why it is so important for our students to know and get command over this language?

The English language plays a vital role in our lives for the fact that it helps us to communicate with foreign countries. It is the most widely used language in the world for studying any subject. Students need English because it broadens their minds, develops soft skills, and improves their quality of life by providing work opportunities. As it is so important for our students to know and learn English, I came up with an idea of promoting the use and understanding of this language through fun activities in the classroom.

I believe a teacher should always try to improve their own skills before applying it on his/her students. There is always a scope of improvement irrespective of the amount of knowledge and experience a person possesses. I develop my English skills by attending Teacher Activity Groups (TAG), affiliated by Tejas Mahrashtra. It was a great experience working with diverse people and sharing knowledge and experiences. Here, I improvised my lesson planning skills and learnt various new methods of teaching to students in interactive way. TAG helped me to enhance my skills and motivated me to plan creative activities for my students, a few of them are mentioned below.

The first step to learn any language is to know its parts of speech. To teach the eight parts of speech (noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection), I first started with teaching the basic parts like noun, verb, adjective and adverb through the game called ‘Sorting vocabulary’. In this game, I first write lots of words on small pieces of paper, which includes noun, verb, adjective, etc. Then I fold all the paper pieces and put it in a bag, after that I make columns and label with different parts of speech. Finally, I ask my students to come up one by one, take a chit from a bag, open it and read the word loud, and place it in the proper column. If the child struggles, I provide help and explain them why the particular word belongs to the specific column. For e.g. if a child picks up a chit and reads the word ‘beautiful’, I explain them the word beautiful is a describing word. The words which describe a person/thing/place (noun) are known as adjective. Then the child places that word in the adjective column and understands the meaning of it. This game helps students to learn faster and give them clear understanding about each and every part of the speech without creating boredom or frustration.

    

Another game that my students love playing is ‘Art gallery/ Drawing competition’. Here, all the students sit with their drawing books and colors then we all first choose a theme for drawing for example “monster”. Once we all agree with the theme, I start describing the look of the monster through a story. In this example it can be “Once upon a time, there was a huge giant blue monster with sharp yellow teeth and bright blue popping eyes…..etc”. I tell the story very slowly sentence by sentence. So my students get the time to process the information, imagine it and draw it. Finally, I check all the drawings and award the one who has drawn all the details. This game develops listening skill, vocabulary, imagination and understanding of the English language.

To develop their reading and comprehension skill we do a group activity called ‘tug of war’. Here I divide the students into two teams and choose a story to read. A student from team A will read a paragraph, while the other team listens to him carefully. Then I ask the questions to team B based upon the team A reading, if they answer correctly team A gets a score, if not then the question is passed on to team B. The team who answers most of the questions wins the comprehension war. The students love this activity as they enthusiastically compete with each other and give their best to listen and understand the story.

To develop their writing and spelling, I do activities like rainbow writing-where students write each words or sentences using different colors; pyramid words – where students learn spelling by making word pyramids; bubble letters- where students write the words or sentences using bubble writing; picture and a story- where students first write their spelling word and then draw a picture related to it, finally they write a sentence based on the picture by using the spelling word in it.

In order to enhance their communication skill, which is one the most crucial aspect of learning English, I have made a strict rule of speaking in English in the classroom and no student is allowed to make fun or bully incase if someone makes mistakes. I keep noticing, praising and rewarding those kids who tries their best to speak in English, this encourage them and the other students to speak in English and boost their confidence. One of the most interesting fun activities we do to develop this skill is playing ‘Bollywood Showtime’. As we all love Bollywood and it’s a big part of entertainment in the lives of Indians. I tried to bring this interest in our learning, here students can come as solo, duo or in a group and will enact their favorite movie scene, actor, or actress but the rule is they need to translate the dialogues in English. The students love this activity and request multiple times to do it. It is one of the best ways to improve their communication skills and increase confidence to speak in public.

These are just a few ways in which I try to keep my students engaged in the learning process without losing their interest. I keep coming up with different and creative ideas to promote English speaking and learning, nowadays as kids are more into social media and technology. I give them home works which involves using their gadgets in a purposeful manner. I either share a YouTube link of a moral or kids’ stories in English or a link of English interactive games, the child needs to watch the story and the next day I ask them questions related to the story or ask to retell the story in English. This has helped student to invest their time in watching something educational and making the best use of technology rather than wasting their time on the internet.

Using these fun activities for teaching has really helped me in grabbing students’ attention and building their interest. I’ve noticed students playing Bollywood Showtime and action game during their break times, which makes me really happy to see the growth and change I bring in their lives. I have seen improvements in my students’ communication skill and also a confidence in their personality. I believe our students are no less than others and if we (teachers) keep trying our best to find interactive ways to teach them, they will shine bright in the outside world.

I would also like to thank Tejas Maharastra project for initiating TAG training, these trainings are very helpful and informative for all the teachers who are aspiring to excel their career and teaching skills. I hope in future there will be more training like this, which focuses on teacher and students development.

Mrs. Afiya Pasware

Upper Primary teacher

Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Vidyala Dighi

Shriwardhan, Maharashtra.