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The Growing Importance of Robotics in School Education

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early childhood educators

How To Help Early Learners Improve Their Reading Skills

August 13, 2021 166 views No Comments
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Reading is a gradual process, and not every learner acquires this skill the same way, or even at the same pace. Reading itself is not an innate skill and needs constant practice to develop. This does not take into account the natural affinity children develop, which could attract or repel them towards reading. As a guest speaker in Square Panda’s expert-hosted webinar mentioned:

To that effect, we offer several suggestions that inform the teaching of early childhood educators, to turn their students into fluent, confident readers for life.

1- Make Reading An Everyday Activity: Incorporate reading into the daily routine, as much as your curriculum allows. Set aside a specific time for reading, and encourage active participation from each child. The practice of reading to them and having them read to you is important to develop a happy and healthy relationship with this skill. For younger readers, start in increments for only around 10-15 minutes a day. As an added incentive, you can set up a small reading corner for kids, filling up this space with colorful chairs, tables, pillows, and of course, books. 

Child using various reading techniques to read

2- Find The Right Literature: A well-developed reading habit reaps rewards for a lifetime, but only when children adopt it willingly. If children are obliged to read books they don’t like, their reading habit will be over before it even begins. Give your little learners every reason to like reading; invest time in finding each child’s preferred book, series, or genre. To start with, you can introduce children to a wide variety of stories and books, allowing children to develop an affinity for various styles, themes, and genres.

3- Reading From Your Surroundings: Reading does not only always have to be out of books and literature; it can be wherever you find inspiration from. Words and letters are all around us, and all we have to do is point them out to children. Create a mini-restaurant and help students read off the menu, play a cartoon clip or song that features letters and words and ask children to repeat it, or help them read out posters and kid-friendly advertisements. Let your imagination run wild, and let it do the work of developing your students’ reading habits.

Little Pan reading, but not from a book

4- Adding Fun To The Reading Process: Mix elements of gamification and fun into the traditional reading process, for added engagement.

  • Enact scenes and read dialogues in special voices. Children can be assigned voices for characters too, once they develop basic reading skills.
  • Humanise characters in stories. Add backgrounds to them, help children understand the morals and learning at the end of each read, and ask children their thoughts about the story. Not only will they reflect on the book they have read, but they also simultaneously boost their ability to speak with confidence.
  • Experiment in some engaging and fun reading games. There are numerous interactive edtech apps and physical books specially designed to entice young learners. Anticipating a new experience with each book could further encourage children to be present for reading time.
A teacher telling a story using hand puppets

5- Engage In Reading-Adjacent Activities:  To encourage children to develop a true love for books, educators can guide children towards various reading-parallel activities. They can create DIY books (LINK to DIY Book Activity-not yet uploaded on YT), author their own comics, and even design bookshelves. The act of creatively exploring books and not necessarily reading them reduces the pressure children feel to love books, and allows them to choose reading activities at their own pace.

6- Going Beyond Reading: Enliven the reading experience further by incorporating additional activities (both digital and physical), competitions, and even rewards (new colourful additions to the reading corner, book-shaped keychains) that celebrate books and reading.For instance, reading games for kids like finding the rhyming words from a particular sentence, identifying the right sound for an action, or matching an image to a word, are simple to come up with, don’t require a lot of props, and are easy to play.

*Download this PDF for fun games and activities to boost reading readiness skills in the classroom.

Not every child will develop a love for reading, but that does not mean children will not become readers. Nor does it negate the essential nature of the reading skill itself. The learned activity has the potential to make or break a child’s future and influence their success in many ways. Let us do our part to ensure no child is left behind because they cannot read.
One of Square Panda India’s core functions is to develop early literacy in children across our nation. See our efforts towards this cause: ecce.squarepanda.in.

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Why We Need To Develop A Multilingual Proficiency

April 29, 2021 233 views No Comments
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Ours is a world brimming with myriad cultures. Often, large segments of this teeming population have a working knowledge of more than two languages, making them multilingual. Estimates indicate that now on an average, one in three people all over the world are bilingual or multilingual (Wei, 2000). 

Given India’s diversity, many children across our nation grow up in a multilingual environment, surrounded by varied languages and dialects.

How India’s Multilingualism Gives Us A Benefit

Understanding and using more than one language is a critical benefit, opening doors for more academic and employment opportunities in a highly competitive world. A study conducted on bilingual and monolingual Konds-speaking children in Odisha (Mohanty, 2000) showed multilingual children both inside and out of schools had an advantage over their monolingual peers with respect to their cognitive and intellectual skills. Says Dr. Nandini Chatterjee Singh (PhD, Cognitive Neuroscientist from National Brain Research Centre, on deputation to UNESCO-MGIEP), “Unlike everywhere else in the world, in India, we do everything differently. We are the only country in the world that exposes our children to read two distinct writing systems.”

In a TedX talk, applied linguistics professor Panos Athanasopoulos remarked that we do not necessarily need both eyes to see as one eye does the job just as well. However, having a pair of functional eyes helps us see three dimensional objects, in high definition. Both eyes see objects in slightly different dimensions; the brain then maps these images and combines them into one multidimensional image. The same way, learning and using multiple languages present different world views and cultures to the mind, which helps us see the world in a different way.

Here’s why young learners are better off learning more than one language at a time.

Challenges Multilingual Classrooms Face

A multilingual student population requires educators and Anganwadi workers who can converse or simply understand multiple languages. This is especially true of many primary education facilities across India, where one teacher/worker is responsible for imparting knowledge on various subjects. To explain content when they are not well-versed in at least one common language themselves, will deprive children of a chance at holistic early education and the opportunity to flourish in a global environment. 

However, realistically, in a country with 22 official languages and numerous dialects (recognised and otherwise), one teacher may not always be proficient in the language(s) of a respective region. Few early childhood educators are fluent in more than one language, and fewer receive training in cultural and linguistic diversity. Additionally, today’s population speaks such an array of languages and dialects that it is entirely possible for bilingual or even multilingual educators to have no context for their students’ languages.

Lessons To Support Multilingualism In The Classroom

  • Non-verbal communication is key: When encountering an unfamiliar dialect or language in the classroom, educators and Anganwadi workers can increase responsiveness by active listening and gesturing. This also helps communicate caring to a child, especially when you cannot understand or speak their first language.
  • Support development of multiple languages simultaneously: Data and multiple studies establish how bilingual and multilingual children outperform their monolingual peers. Every early learning stakeholder must be similarly aligned towards fostering inclusive growth by enhancing multi-language acquisition.
  • Encourage learning in pairs: Strong social and emotional foundations support all other learning, a fact that authors Iliana Alanís and María G. Arreguín-Anderson prove in their paper ‘Paired Learning: Strategies for Enhancing Social Competence in Dual Language Classrooms.‘ Their observation of children in dual language classrooms, from preschool to first grade led them to the conclusion that learning in pairs increased conversational opportunities for dual language learners and greatly reduced their stress. This in turn led to better overall learning outcomes.
  • Take time to explain one word in multiple languages: Languages often have varying degrees of similarity to each other, something that educators and Anganwadi workers can use to enhance a child’s foundational literacy skills. From here, the explanation can move to how one word changes across languages. For example, the word ‘flower’ is pronounced and written the same way in Hindi (फूल) and in Marathi (फूल).

Learning to speak and read in multiple languages is healthy for the brain as it requires more concentration, focus and thought, which conditions our mind to handle a higher cognitive load. Learning a language alongside a child’s native language prepares them for the future, opening up a world that is not accessible to them otherwise. Additionally, a workforce filled with multilingual workers, who can speak different languages with confidence, will help improve income levels and socio-economic quality in our country.

At Square Panda India, we believe that in a multilingual country like India, children AND educators need to be well-versed in more than one language to properly succeed in the future. Our Aarambh initiative, which immerses educators, Anganwadi workers, and children in local languages, will greatly impact India’s early learning landscape. Learn more: ecce.squarepanda.in

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