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| EDUCATION TRIBUNE |
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Theatre as a means of teaching
Adopt activity-based learning Campus Notes
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Theatre as a means of teaching Man is a born actor. A child learns by imitating others. He learns speech by hearing and observing those around him. As he grows up, he adopts role-playing. The little girl will use a dupatta as a saree and plays with her kitchen set after observing her mother in the kitchen. As she increases her world beyond the informal group of the family and enters the formal portals of the school, the teacher becomes the role model. Dolls and teddy bears become the students in the toy room. Acting can be used as an effective tool in everyday teaching. Drama and theatre are not just extra-curricular activities rather they are an essential part of education. Subjects like English and hare often taught through this method, but knowledge about certain areas of maths can also be imparted through acting. Creating a market scene in the class where young learners can learn about buying and selling can make this quantity-loaded subject all the more interesting. Theatre and drama in school convert the rigid, formal process of instruction into a masti ki pathshala. Participation in plays boosts the confidence of students as they learn to speak in public and overcome stage fear. Dr Kulbir Dhaliwal, a theatre person who occasionally conducts acting workshops, states: “A hyper active child who disrupts the teaching-learning process can be easily handled if his energies are channelised in the right direction. Where all other means have failed, theatre enters. The child initially shows interest during the auditions and once he bags a role, he has to learn the dialogues. Now, his pent up energy has found an outlet and he delivers with aplomb.” At the primary level, the children are given roles of birds, animals, flowers and cartoon characters with whom they can easily identify. In today’s small nuclear families, many children are spoilt brats and do not take “No” for an answer. Acting in a play, they learn to co-operate and co-ordinate with each other. While helping schools conduct plays, Dr Dhaliwal has also observed that during auditioning, there is a rush for the role of the main character. Many wannabe actors throw a tantrum if they do not bag the lead role but soon everything falls into place. Harpreet Singh Virk, theatre teacher working with Stepping Stones School, Chandigarh, observes that a normally shy child is transformed on stage. He is of the view that theatre should be taught by a professional and schools are the right place to begin. A person in this field will teach his charges the nuances of acting, voice modulation, rhythm in dialogue and the correct use of body language. Inayat Brar, a Class IV student at YPS, Mohali, and drama enthusiast, seems to ditto the above opinion. Inter-house dramatics and theatre workshops take the learners beyond the worlds of books where all can let their hair down. Apart from acting, they pick up basics of stage make-up, set design, costumes and props. Theatre disciplines the child and teaches him to take competition in a positive sense. With child artistes ruling the roost, drama can also be an integral part of the curriculum.
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Adopt activity-based learning THE school continues to remains at the core of the country’s massive educational machinery. A typical government school usually has fixed working hours, rigid timetables, single date of entry into the school and rigid norms about “right age” for a particular class. The pervasiveness of traditional hierarchy between the student and the teacher, formal system of evaluation and examinations, textbook-based teaching, learning by rote and unattractive curricula leave little scope of concentrating on the hidden agenda of incorporating new features that focus on individual care and child-centered activity-based learning and ensuring appropriate socialisation of students. The present-day school system is evidenced with only the “chalk and talk” method of teaching in the classroom. Students are not at all encouraged to participate in classroom discussions. The use of audiovisual media, teacher-designed worksheets, project works, assignments, oral presentations, field trips and excursions to surrounding areas are not all practiced in government schools. There are no self-assessment exercises, no self-study worksheets and no group projects. Learning is a one-way communication. The information from the prescribed textbooks is transmitted by the teacher to the learner, many a times, irrespective of whether it reaches the student or not. A self-sustaining and enabling process of teaching-learning is least evident in the present arrangement. Communication in the classrooms is, by and large, not very meaningful and effective. Most of the teachers hardly use any improvised teaching-learning materials while teaching the students. The traditional hierarchy that exists between the teacher and the student in schools leaves little space for the students to be friendly and informal with the teacher. Most teachers still think that learning without fear of punishment is not possible. They do not give any consideration as to what kind of teaching-learning material should be used to supplement the traditional “chalk and talk” method of teaching. How should they use and develop the improvised means of teaching? How should they conduct group activities and what should be a proper sitting arrangement in the class? What is the difference between discipline and punishment? How to build rapport with students which is a precondition for a congenial classroom environment? What is the importance of classroom transactions in the teaching learning process? How to change the nature and direction of the transactions to make them more meaningful? All such issues don’t even find a mention in the meetings at the higher levels of the planning machinery. The popular notion that prevails all across is that the textbook-based teaching is the only way of ensuring good school education. However, in today’s technology-driven world, there are lot many ways and means which can be helpful in making the teaching-learning process more child-centric, fun-filled and students’ friendly. There is, thus, a need to reconstruct the existing notions of teaching-learning process and supplement them with joyful and activity-based curriculum wherein the teacher is not just a transmitter of knowledge but he/she should act more as a facilitator and a guide to the student. There should be extensive use of audio-visual media and indoor and outdoor activities like songs, games, toys, quizzes, assignments, presentations, trips, art and craft and other such improvised teaching-learning materials. Since the teaching-learning process is greatly influenced by the quality of school’s infrastructure and available facilities, the schools, which continue to be without the facilities like adequate rooms, blackboards, toilets, drinking water, electricity etc, should have these basic amenities. The architectural designs of the school and the classroom, the novelty in school furniture, the flexibility in sitting arrangements, the decoration on the walls with colorful charts, craftwork, pictures and maps have a great impact on the quality of teaching and learning. Every school should have subject-specific classrooms so as to have separate classrooms for each subject. For instance, the science class should be held only in the science room and likewise the mathematics class should be held in the mathematics room. These rooms should have relevant and adequate teaching-learning materials as per the requirements of the particular subject. Each of these classrooms should have a unique system of teaching through games, poems, quizzes, crosswords and other relevant indoor activities. Teachers’ orientation and training is both critical as well as important to make them learn new techniques to design supplementary teaching and learning material. There is also a need to give more freedom and autonomy to teachers to develop supplementary teaching-learning material and organise co-curricular activities both inside as well as outside the classrooms. Fostering positive community-school linkages are very important to have a more participatory and collaborating planning towards achieving this paradigm shift. The writer is Reader (Social Work),
Punjabi University, Patiala |
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Campus Notes The Youth Welfare Department of the university organised a debate competition on "Population Growth is Hindrance for Sustainable Development" on the university campus recently. The debate competition was sponsored by the Indian Association of Parliamentarians, New Delhi. As many as 18 teams from the affiliated colleges and the university campus participated in the competition won by Arshdeep Singh of the Electronics Department, while Sakshi of PCMSD College, Jalandhar, and Vidhi Kalotra of SRPAAB College, Pathankot, secured second and third positions, respectively. Charanvir Kaur of the Electronics Department of the university was awarded the consolation prize. Dr Saranjeet Singh Dhillon and Dr Anju Chawala were the judges on this occasion. The best two speakers will participate in the national-level competitions to be held in the month of November in New Delhi.
Supplementary exams
The B.Ed supplementary examinations of Guru Nanak Dev University will commence from October 14. The university has already dispatched roll numbers to all eligible candidates. Dr R. K. Bedi, Professor and in charge (examinations), said if any candidate did not get roll number by October 12, he or she could personally collect the roll number from the Examination Branch of the university by October 13. He also advised the students to bring their attested photographs and a photocopy of the detailed marksheet of B.Ed with them.
Mass copying
The university Syndicate has decided to cancel the examinations to Kamal Institute of Higher Education and Advance Technology, New Delhi, and Trinity Institute of Management and Technology, New Delhi, on charges of mass copying. The examinations will be held again and the dates will be decided later on, said university authorities. —
Contributed by P. K. Jaiswar
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Drama comes handy in making a boring history lecture come alive. In a civics class, the entire election process can be understood by the students better if they hold the mock elections in the class. Young learners are made to mug up paragraphs on the harm done to nature. Environmental issues can be highlighted through plays where the children act as trees, creatures of the forest and man their biggest enemy.
There is little scope of imagination and creativity, at least, as far as the classroom transactions are concerned. The inflexibility and rigid norms restrict teachers to teach their lessons and complete the syllabi in a given timeframe rather than using innovative activity and experience-based teaching and learning techniques in the class. Teachers don’t enjoy any autonomy to create the right ambience for the child to learn in a child-friendly and fun-filled way.