“With the emphasis on teaching of English from grade one in schools of India and blended learning almost becoming a norm in which use of digital tools to transmit, store, create, share or exchange information are the new-age skills for both teachers and students, it has become desirable that teachers acquire digital and media literacy. Most subject teachers including English teachers and STEM teachers are required to the use of digital tools and related skills in modern context. The use of digital tools which rely on use of visual symbols or icons should become the medium of learning English at grade one itself,” said Jaipur-based educator-researcher Dr Lalit Kishore, whose paper got accepted for a conference on Teaching of English in Faridabad.
The the abstract of the accepted paper “Inclusion of Computer Related Sight Vocabulary for Learning Alphabet in Grade One: Action Research to Contextualize Alphabet Learning” is as follows
Abstract
Keeping in view the changed situation in the urban primary schools with the introduction of computers and smart classrooms, an action research was undertaken to teach alphabet by including the sight vocabulary related to technological devices. Four clap rhymes and additional flash cards were created to create sight vocabulary of 52 existing pictures and 26 new iconic visuals related to computers and cell-phones. For action research that lasted for six days, one day was devoted to rhymes and five other days for sight vocabulary of five or six letters related words per day. The new words included in the sight vocabulary were as follows: Abacus; Bluetooth; CPU; DVD; Email; Floppy; Game-port; Hard-disk; Iphone; Joystick; Keyboard; Laptop; Modem; Nero; Orkut; Printer; Q-cable; Ram; Server; Twitter; UPS; Vista; Webcam; XP; Youtube; Zorpia. A recall test on children (N=25, age= 5-6 years, MSE group, urban) for random ten picture-to-word matching showed 80 X 80 performance indicating the effectiveness of the intervention. Implication of the action research is that the sight-vocabulary should be contextualized every time the technological environment changes. The outcome of the action research was the creation of knowledge product in the form of flash cards and new clap rhymes. Educational innovations for language learning need to keep to keep pace with technological revolutions.
Keywords: Clap rhymes; computer iconic visuals; English instruction; sight vocabulary
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