Success!

One of the things that has been the most difficult for me is the way that students in India are taught. Everything is rote memorization and copying. Because of this, they see no problem with copying work from one another, and writing is very difficult because it requires them to think of things themselves. I get lots of whining when I require my 7th and 8th standard English classes to write more than a couple of sentences, which I do every day at the beginning of class. In 1st standard, the idea that writing could be used to communicate and express their own thoughts is completely foreign. They only think of writing as copying sentences as words provided by the teacher to practice letter formation. So, I have been trying to get them to sound out and write words - invented spelling is fine, I just want them to make the sound-symbol connection and record something original. Today, I went back to early kindergarten and had them draw a picture and label it. And it worked! I had pictures of ice cream, cats, suns, dogs, lions, tigers, dinosaurs, fish, and many more. The kids drew and labeled their pictures, mostly by sounding them out. It was really great to see their success and their excitement, and I think the message was at least partly received that writing is not copying - it is communicating.