Progress report on the kids
From Cmi Spark
Spark (alias Lend a helping Hand alias Social Service Wing), a social work group at CMI, has been involved with educating and babysitting (parenting?) children of the construction site workers involved in building the CMI hostels. This page is meant to serve as a progress report on the education of each fo the children.
Read an short note on Lend a helping hand before beginning on this progress report.
Contents |
Satish (Satyanarayana)
Personal information
Satish (full name: Satyanarayana) is about 8-10 years old (exact age unknown). He is from the Andhra, and knows Telugu. He did his schooling uptil Class 3, but has not been going to school for some time owing to (what?) circumstances. Thus, while he has learnt English (reading/writing), Telugu (reading/writing) and some basic arithmetic, he has forgotten a lot of it.
Mathematics education
- Counting (recitation) from 1 to 10 in English and Telugu : very good
- Counting (cardinalities of sets) upto size 10, in English and Telugu : very good
- Translating numbers from English to Telugu and vice versa: a little weak
- Adding numbers: He has the intuitive idea but fumbles at times
- Number followed by a qualified (singular/plural) noun: Stuff like "1 cat", "3 cats" and so on. He seems to have grasped the intuitive idea but requires a little more training in this respect.
- Counting money: He seems to be quite good at that. He can add money better than he can add dots :)
Language education (English)
- The alphabet: Thanks to English being a non-phonetic langauge, Satish faces a little confusion between the phonetic alphabet and the alphabet "a bee see deee eee eff ...." However, he is able to handle the written alphabet with reasonable ease
- Pronouncing words: Through transliteration to Telugu, he has started understanding the pronunciation of basic, simple monosyllabic words. However, he requires some guidance to get started. Currently. the following drills are being used: "cat sat bat mat rat hat fat...", "cut sut but mut jut rut tut ..." and so on.
- Connnecting word, pronunciation and meaning: I think Satish understands the connection conceptually. Efforts have been made by Bodhayan to connect words with pictures (by drawing a picture and writing the English word alongside), with sounds (by writing the word and speaking it), with the real world (by pointing to physical things and writing them).
- The use of pronouns, tense, person, gender: Since Satish already knows the use of pronouns in Telugu, the conceptual part is taken care of. Satish seemed to grasp notions of person and gender. We have not tried introducing him to the notion of tense.
- Common courtesies: Words like sorry, please and thank you don't seem to be part of Satish's regular vocabulary. However, this still needs to be explored.
Efforts at teaching Satish
Satish is probably the pupil on whom the largest proportion of Spark's educational effort has been devoted. The education effort for Satish has focussed on the following:
- Improving his ability to read and write English
- Increasing his familiarity with arithmetic and numbers
Since Satish is fairly comfortably with spoken Telugu, most educational efforts for him have been in a mix of Telugu and English. The main people communicating to him in Telugu were Jayanth, Ravitej and Bhanukiran. Vipul also tried to teach him using a combination of English and the little Telugu that Vipul himself learnt in the process.
Initially, the teaching was ad hoc, and based on the individual whims and fancies of the instructor. Later, books were given to Satish for him to use even after the instructors were gone. The books given include:
- A book in mathematics bought from Crossword (don't remember the name): Since most of the instructions in the book were in English, Satish required the guidance of CMI students for solving some parts of the book. However, he did many other parts on his own. Here's a picture of
.
- The book Learn English from Telugu by Balaji Publications: The idea of the book has been explained to Satish. Even though it is unlikely that Satish will be able to pick up English alone from the book, it is possible that some adult around him who knows the Telugu script will be able to help Satish with the book.
- Some colouring books: Here, Satish appears not only to have filled his own colouring books, but also interfered with those of Bhavani and Vasu! It is possible that unlike children from more privileged backgrounds, he did not get to experience the fascinations of filling colouring books at a younger age, so he is living out those fascinations now!
