At Government Lower Primary School, Thycaud, students are learning Malayalam in an interesting and fun manner.
A General Education department initiative called the Sachitra notebook is helping class 1 and 2 students learn the language and simultaneously nurture their talents such as drawing and craft.
This is especially useful since the activities are based on a story that helps children learn the alphabets naturally through characters and situations without any need for rote learning.
So how exactly does the Sachitra notebook initiate students into the study of the language? As the name itself denotes, Sachitra is learning with pictures.
At the Thycaud LP School, a couple of days after school reopening, the class 1 students heard a story about a parrot. So, they stuck a parrot made of craftpaper on to their Sachitra notebook. As the story progressed, the students stuck a cutout of a house with windows and doors, the girl Tara, and the rice the parrot wanted.
By day nine, not only had the students learnt to recognise letters that repeatedly appeared in the story, they had learnt to read them too. And write it in their notebook and the blackboard.
Along with this, they learnt how to stick pictures, draw the parrot’s beak, its legs, draw and colour trees, and so on.
This way, the children begin with alphabets but quickly move on to words, and by the time the entire story is completed, they may begin writing simple sentences. And every time, a new character or situation arises, they can go back and refer to what they had done earlier to relate and write those letters in the new context.
The State follows the practice of presenting ideas and concepts to familiarise students with alphabets, rather than memorise it in its entirety. Sachitra makes introduction of the ideas easier and interesting. The teachers too have their notebook, which is their guide for using teaching learning materials to keep the children involved.
The teachers say Sachitra will be of huge help in easing students into the textbook, considering the gains the students have shown is such a small period.
The Sachitra module has been developed by the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), while field-level training and funding has been supported by the Samagra Shiksha, Kerala. Launched on an experimental basis in class 1 and 2, it will be expanded to the classes 3 and 4 for Mathematics and English too.
Samagra Shiksha officials say Sachitra is an evolving text, and gains importance because of the emphasis on academic quality in classes 1 to 4 this academic year. It helps improve students’ learning competencies including reading, keeps them active through dialogue and singing to rhythm and beats, improves their confidence, and develops their psychomotor skills. WhatsApp groups of teachers help them share their experiences and the students’ output and learn from others too.
