Teaching Tools

Innovative Ideas

I feel teaching should be done in a creative way. Studying can never be boring if it is taught in a playful manner. One must understand that while introducing a new concept to children, some could have a hard time grasping it. These new concepts can be simplified by relating them with things that we do in our everyday life. Through role play a child can identify with the concept by being part of the making of that concept.

Activity based class

I introduced the concept of conjunctions to young ones through an interesting activity. I informed them that conjunctions are words which join two sentences together. I divided my class into groups of three. One child had to make a sentence, the next child had to add on an entirely new sentence and the last child had to use a conjunction to combine the two sentences. The child who represents a conjunction has to join hands with the children representing the sentences by standing between them. While the other two stand on either side of him in a single chain.

Role play

Another way to introduce the same concept is by assigning roles of shopkeepers and customers to each child.

The children enact a scene in a stationary shop-

The shopkeeper: “Tell me what would you like to buy? A notebook or a pencil box?”

The customer1: “I want to buy two color pencils and five blue pens.”

Customer 2: “I also want to buy color chalks but my mother wants me to buy seven note books.”

The shopkeeper hands them the items and the children make the payment.

The children came up with innumerable sentences that they could combine with the help of conjunctions. The class was a great success. By the end of the class the children were so excited that they continued to play the game for just the fun of it. They grasped the difficult concept without ever realizing that they had fun while they learnt.

PS As children have untapped potential in them, I decided to be more creatively charged and asked the children to write poems and stories using conjunctions.