Teacher workshop- Teaching English

On 3 February 2018, the Pre-Primary department got the opportunity to attend a workshop, Teaching English. This was conducted by Ms. Kiran Bhatt, who is a qualified trainer of English language, currently working with the NGO named Vidya.

The objective of the workshop was to orient children to use English as a communication tool and also get a flavour of the finer points of the language.

Ms. Bhatt began the interactive workshop with an ice breaker session by asking teachers to introduce themselves with illustrations. To warm up, she also asked each one to talk about each other's qualities. To begin with Ms. Bhatt used some commonplace class room examples to introduce the topic and then clearly explained how children can be taught the habit of learning and using new words on a regular basis. Next, she asked teachers to form groups and assigned each group a task of communicating using different emotions. She made it a point to emphasise upon the importance of new words and vocabulary in enhancing ones speech. She explained how crucial pronunciation is in a child's learning of a language. She showed power point presentations and videos on pronunciation, Alpha blocks and phonics. She focussed on how to blend different words and pronounce them correctly.

In another activity, Ms. Bhatt assigned a topic relating to rhymes, phonemes etc. to each group. The teachers were then asked to prepare and present their ideas using hand-outs (provided to them) and asked to explain how they would conduct the lessons in class.

It was indeed a learning experience for all of us.

Ms. Jaspreet Kaur.