The National Education Policy-2020 approved by union cabinet promises that national and State curriculum materials developed, for use by children in inclusive and special schools. The National Institute of Open Learning has been assigned the task of developing curricular modules and learning material in this respect.
My action research at Disha in Jaipur suggests that teacher made and sign language based mini-poems help children to acquire vocabulary with mental images. Such poems of four-lines as illustrated in YouTube link of my video made on Friendship Day
The wording of four-line poem for inclusive schooling goes as follows.
Short poem example
Be a friend who smiles
Be a friend who dials
Be a friend who cares
Be a friend who shares
The gestures can be used for: be/become, who, smile, dial, care and share to vocabulary building.
In an my earlier write-up, I had brought up the following points.
Sign language is a form of legitimate and effective communication tool as a part of multi-modal communication. Many children miss the development stage of the use of gestures as babies and many others cannot hear or are non-verbal along with some other disability. Use of gestures and basic aspects of sign language creates an inclusive and accommodative classroom situation.
Sign language literacy for all teachers and schools has also been made mandatory under the Right to Education Act and Disability Rights Act.
Even pedagogy stresses the need for vocabulary building of all students by linking standard language codes with sign language codes to produce mental images and make a shift towards the brain development education.
The pedagogy of Whole Brain Education which is based upon the findings of the research in neuro-science, stresses the use of multi-modal communication of which sign language is an important part. It should be used amply for intellectual or cognitive development of children across the ability range.
Furthermore, no technology and software should be used for early language developments. The researches have warned against the use of technology during early interventions for language development.
Since there is a lack of literature in the form of gesture-based mini-poems which help children to knowing about the objects of their immediate surroundings, teachers often use the conventional poems which make children mechanical and copy-cats since the poems are loaded with the words of which children do not have any prior experiences of and hardly evoke mental images.
Teachers can develop similar poems easily to use them for developing sight vocabulary with flash cards and the matching exercise type worksheets.
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