There is a consistent
effort made to ensure that child friendly teaching learning materials are
used and the classrooms are made material rich. These are either ready made
materials or materials made by the teachers themselves. There is a
consistent effort to ensure cost effectiveness without compromising on
quality.
Bodh does not prescribe
textbooks for children up to the early ‘Shala-samooh’ level. In Grade V,
children get textbooks, published by SCERT/Rajasthan Bureau, from the
school. For the lower level also, Bodh schools have textbooks in their
libraries/resource room, from where the children can get these books as and
when required by them. These books are used as reference books mainly at the
time of direct teaching.
For the ‘Shala-arambh’
group the organization has developed a ‘Khel Pathmala’. Khel Mala is a
series of activities planned to promote the Language and Mathematics
competencies among children. The important characteristics of this series
are:
The material in the series has been developed mainly for the
development of cognitive abilities, especially in Language and number
comprehension.
Most of the material can be used as play material (concrete
material).
The material has been designed in such a way that play is the
central core of attraction; through play the child develops
Language/Mathematics competencies.
All the materials of the ‘Khel Pathmala’ have been organized in a
graded sequence, i.e. simple to complex, direct to indirect, concrete
to abstract and particular to general.
In this series, each activity has been designed in such a way as to
initiate the learner from a very simple level to a complex level.
The teacher’s role is more of a facilitator in this series.
Learning by doing and experiencing is encouraged
among learners throughout the series.
It enhances not only cognitive behavior, but affective and
psychomotor behavior is also strengthened. The series includes a lot
of manipulative activities, poems and songs.
Bodh believes that this
kit covers only some aspects of the early primary grades. In addition to
these activities, other performance enhancing activities have also been
taken care of. These are artwork, Hast Kala (SUPW), drama, story-telling
music (song, dance), work on worksheets etc. The important activities of
‘Khel Pathmala’ with their major functions are given:
These are also
workbooks, activity books for early grades in Language and Mathematics. The
workbooks would contain a variety of individual activities, which are
organized in a graded level of difficulty. In fact, these materials have
been regularly organized and sequenced in the in-service workshops of
teachers.
There is a book of
collection of children’s songs (Balgeet Sangrah) and children’s games (Balkhel
Sankalan), a book on crafts and a book on puppets too.
