New Delhi: According to the National Policy on Education 2020, about five crore children teaching in primary schools are facing serious learning problems. These children do not achieve sufficient capacity for the basic needs of reading and writing skills at the basic level of their classroom. Due to this, children are not able to do normal tasks like reading, reading comprehension, and original writing, and sometimes this reason also becomes the reason for children’s escape from education. Schools closed due to Corona have taken this problem of children to a more serious stage.
At present, there is a need to identify these problems related to language learning of children and take necessary measures to solve them, otherwise, this learning loss due to corona will affect the language learning abilities of children. Closed schools for almost two years have dropped children up to class three with the same level as class one. In such a situation, there is a need to develop a meaningful and active environment in the classrooms for learning to read and write. Especially those children living in rural and deprived areas, who have already been deprived of a print-rich environment in their environment and contrary to the claims, due to lack of adequate technical facilities during the Corona period, they have stayed away from online learning.
It has been understood from classroom experiences that when children learn to read and write, they are exposed to meaningful reading material related to their surroundings. Therefore, a rich environment of print-rich has to be developed within the classroom so that children can become aware by making their understanding of the material written. Let them understand that spoken words can be written, written words can be read/spoken. Apart from this, children also understand how to hold a book, where to start reading on a page, read written material from left to right, top to bottom and front to back. Children begin to read the written words in the form of pictures and try to read them in harmony with the words written with the picture, this stage of reading efforts before decoding creates interest in reading and reading comprehension in children.
That is why it is necessary that the reading space of children should be enriched with an active print-rich. Generally, putting story/poetry charts in the classroom or keeping some books in the library is considered print-rich and if these are not changed for a long time, then this print-rich becomes obsolete. After some time the children start getting tired of it, so it is necessary that the classroom should be filled with active print i.e. such places for children to read and write in the class have to be decided where children can do various activities of reading and writing in a comfortable and fear-free environment.
During the Corona period, when the schools were closed and studies were stopped, it was not understood how to start studies with the children of the school, then work on the part of print awareness learned in the course of Language and Learning Foundation (LLF) Started doing this and thought that if children cannot come to school, then why not educational materials should be made available to the children And from here the work of making each house and village print-rich started working together with the children, so the children started getting inspired to read and write even in adverse situations. And this work started by making children’s homes print-rich and with the help of children in each house started making charts of small stories/poems. Older children and parents who knew how to read and write were asked to sing the poems written in these charts to younger children and talk about them. In this way, about 5-7 charts were put in each house on which the children started working together.
In the second part of the same work, children were given books of stories/poems from house to house, which led to a lesser beginning of reading books with the children. When the corona subsided a little, libraries were made at two places in the village, where children would come and read the books themselves, take them back and keep them. Due to this, the children were engaged in the activities of reading and writing even in adverse conditions. Here often the stories were translated from Hindi into the local Bagri language and talked with the children.
One day, during a discussion with the children, it was decided that their names should be written in Hindi, Bagri, and English on everything in the village and the names of each member at their homes with the children, on hand pump mileage stations, electric poles, trees mean everything.
The children themselves were made attendance charts, in which they themselves used to attend. A place was created where he used to write his mind. The word wall was built.
Children started reading and writing because of the changing activities every day. During this entire task, the activity of teaching reading and writing, such as teaching letters/quantities, etc., was not undertaken. But the children started reading and writing their minds, and their expression skills got sharper. They started talking in Hindi as well as the language of the house.
After the school opens, these same things have been started in the classroom as well, so reading and writing are becoming meaningful and fun. Now the children not only read but also express their views on the subject matter they read.
Here it has to be kept in mind that we have a lot of activities, which are in their own environment, start with their language because children bring their own understanding about the world and in language if we teach them to read and write better. So they themselves build their knowledge. That is, it is very important to maintain an active and meaningful written environment in the classroom so that the children are not only familiar with the written material, but also can develop a deep and meaningful relationship with them.