Have fun with English
In rural areas, the children are taught in their native language. To be specific, in rural areas of Pondicherry, the rural schools follow Tamil medium. Guess what is one of the fundamentals that brought you to where you are now? Yes, the one what you are reading in - ENGLISH. This language opens the door to prospective careers, computers, web resources, technical books, magazines, foreign education and career opportunities and what not. (Atleast in India, that's the case) To peep throught the door of such avenues, these less privileged children need English. We had launched a career counselling programme for the rural children in Abishegapakkam on Februrary. Since they were Tamil medium students, we conducted the whole programme (Test, reports, counselling) in Tamil. That is where we identified the need for English. Furthermore, our plans of "Professional coaching for competitive exams", "Fun filled camps on subjects such as Maths, Science, Computers" and "Nurturing the genius" are not able to take off as basic knowledge of English is required.
So we planned for a programme "Have fun with English" that would help children pick up the language in a fun-filled atmosphere unlike the traditional education system. The following is the jist of the plan:
* Elementary English
* Story Reading/Telling
* Extempo on their favorite topics
* Group discussion / debates
* Writing about their views/dreams
* Enact funny English skits (plays/dramas)
* Play children (English) movies
* Conduct Quiz/Puzzles/Games
* Seminar by volunteers on any interesting topic
With the help of an association (Narendra Youth Association) local to Pillaichavady, we distributed notices of the programme in and around Pillaichavady covering Kalapet also. Around 100 students from VII to XII Std attended the Evaluation Test. The purpose of the Evaluation Test was to register the interested students, evaluate the proficiency of each student and accordingly allot them into batches.
On June 4th, 2005, our weekend started with anxious innocent faces surrounding us with the question whether they would be selected for the programme. The anxious faces turned to joyful smiles with gasps of relief and whispers "everyone will be selected". Yes, we announced that the "English Level Evaluation Test" was merely to gauge the level of the students to appropriately segregate them into batches. We conducted a written test and a friendly talk to each student to gauge his/her level in English. Many students didn’t even have breakfast but were eagerly waiting for the allocation of batches after the evaluation. We displayed the movie "Ice Age" and "Finding Nemo" for the children while we were evaluating each of them with a personal interview and alloted them into batches. We alloted 4 batches.
Batch 1: Monday, Wednesday, Friday - 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm
Batch 2: Monday, Wednesday, Friday - 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Batch 3: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday - 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm
Batch 4: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday - 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm
Batch 1 and 2 did not know alphabets. Batch 3 knew some few words. Batch 4 knew to construct sentences, though grammatically incorrect.
So we planned for a programme "Have fun with English" that would help children pick up the language in a fun-filled atmosphere unlike the traditional education system. The following is the jist of the plan:
* Elementary English
* Story Reading/Telling
* Extempo on their favorite topics
* Group discussion / debates
* Writing about their views/dreams
* Enact funny English skits (plays/dramas)
* Play children (English) movies
* Conduct Quiz/Puzzles/Games
* Seminar by volunteers on any interesting topic
With the help of an association (Narendra Youth Association) local to Pillaichavady, we distributed notices of the programme in and around Pillaichavady covering Kalapet also. Around 100 students from VII to XII Std attended the Evaluation Test. The purpose of the Evaluation Test was to register the interested students, evaluate the proficiency of each student and accordingly allot them into batches.
On June 4th, 2005, our weekend started with anxious innocent faces surrounding us with the question whether they would be selected for the programme. The anxious faces turned to joyful smiles with gasps of relief and whispers "everyone will be selected". Yes, we announced that the "English Level Evaluation Test" was merely to gauge the level of the students to appropriately segregate them into batches. We conducted a written test and a friendly talk to each student to gauge his/her level in English. Many students didn’t even have breakfast but were eagerly waiting for the allocation of batches after the evaluation. We displayed the movie "Ice Age" and "Finding Nemo" for the children while we were evaluating each of them with a personal interview and alloted them into batches. We alloted 4 batches.
Batch 1: Monday, Wednesday, Friday - 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm
Batch 2: Monday, Wednesday, Friday - 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Batch 3: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday - 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm
Batch 4: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday - 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm
Batch 1 and 2 did not know alphabets. Batch 3 knew some few words. Batch 4 knew to construct sentences, though grammatically incorrect.
On June 6th, 2005, we commenced the "Have fun with English" programme with an introduction to the essentiality of English. We had allotted 3 classes per week for a student, but the students are so enthusiastic to learn English everyday that they want to stand behind and listen to the classes of the other batches.