The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Helping teachers to help the child

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Tuesday, Jun 23, 2009
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Helping teachers to help the child

Shilpa Sebastian R.

A phonic kit that introduces a child to the wonder world of alphabets

— Photo: K. Gopinathan

Play-way method: Lalitha Appachu has created a phonetic study kit for children.

BANGALORE: Lalitha Appachu trains teachers by conducting workshops on how to make classroom learning fun for children.

She started as a teacher, worked in India and abroad and during the IT boom took up a job as an editor. But she soon found that it was not her call. “I had to do something with children. I quit and started conducting workshops for teachers,” recalled Ms. Lalitha.

In the past seven years of working with teachers from varied schools, she realised that no matter how positive they were at the workshop “they went back to their old teaching methods in the class. That made me think of this kit. I felt that if they had ready material to use, it would be easy for them,” she said, while displaying her kit for children titled “My Phonic Book – Level 1”.

“A child is a learning machine. What do we do in a class? We just want to finish a book cover to cover. With that we also finish the child. Children love to learn and we don’t use that excitement,” she said.

“A child wants to do things, explain and discover stuff and show it to us. But it’s always the other way round in a class,” she added. “A child has to be given a free hand to scribble and draw when he or she is introduced to writing. Why should we waste a whole year teaching just a,b,c… ?”.

Ms. Lalitha’s kits are available at all bookstores and are designed as one kit per child. Priced at Rs. 552, it offers two books with simple activities and instructions, an audio CD with songs and crayons to work with.

“The size has to be jumbo when you introduce writing to a child. There are also activities with clay and sand to make it more fun,” she said.

Why phonic sounds? “We are phonic spellers too. Think a big word and spell it; you will break it up into bits and parts. This kit will introduce the child to the alphabet and the sound, so that he is not at a loss when he goes to class one,” said Ms. Lalitha, who travels all over the country to work with teachers.

Range

According to Lalitha, a three-year-old should be able to work with her kit. She is also working with schools that teach differently-abled children, especially those who are dyslexic.

The fun way

“This kind of play-way method shows a child that language is not rigid but fun. The child must be allowed to manipulate the sounds,” said the trainer who is right now working on phonic kits in level 2 (for LKG children) and Level 3 (for UKG children).

“For a child to excel, he has to be a powerful reader. There has to be a strong foundation. This kit helps in such a way that by the time he is through the first kit, he is not struggling but is ready to read and write,” she said.

The kit can be bought by the school and inculcated into the curriculum, or parents can independently buy them and work with their children at home.

A.V. Education Society School and India International School are already using her kit.

Ms. Lalitha can be contacted after 5.30 p.m. on 9945854378 or via email at lalitha-appachu@yahoo.com

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