TIIE-EL-Classroom

Quantitative Analyses

Can be by module / 'competency'

Qualitative Analyses

GHPS Byrasandra

GHPS Byrasandra Govt. Higher primary School is located in the South of Bangalore, Jayanagar. This School consists of around 250 students from the grades 1-7. There are around 6 teachers (Including HM). Medium of Instruction is Kannada. The classes selected for our intervention program were 6 and 7. There are around 11 children in 6^th Std and 15 children in 7^th std. Both 6^th and 7^th children. Majority of the children in both the standards speak Kannada. But they do have children from Tamil, Telugu and Urdu languages. Most of the children come from Gulbarga colony slum. Parents are mostly from lower middle class and middle class. Also, the educational background of parents is mostly literate/ educated and illiterate/ uneducated. The interaction/relationship between the Teacher and students is good. (Few children have in fact said that they were sad because one of the teacher has not come to school). Corporal Punishments seem to exist (Teachers walk with stick to Classrooms). Teachers believe that its difficult to handle the children without stick, and they would listen only if they use stick.

We observed the following behavioral challenges when dealing with children of grade 6 and 7. We encountered a lot of behavioral issues like pulling, pushing, teasing, hitting when both 6 and 7 were combined for the class. Hence, we divided class 6 and 7 children and conducted sessions separately every time. During separate sessions following observations were noted. Grade 6 children would behave well in the absence of Grade 7 but 2 children would always sit quiet, isolate from others and would not participate in any activity and were ignored by their peers. While grade 7 children would always demonstrate aggressiveness, overpowering, hitting others, bullying and fighting with each other. Most of the boys would immediately react and hit others when they found that the other person is not supporting their thoughts/ideas and going against their thoughts/ideas. The understanding that the other person also has the right to say whatever he feels/thinks was not at all internalized. The girls from 6^th std used to be very quiet throughout the class and would not talk or share anything as the boys were overpowering. One important observations that we could make during our sessions was that the boys normally fought for using languages other than Kannada. If somebody uses a language other than Kannada they would even go and hit the other child. Many a cases there were fights among children due to Language issues and also for talking bad about their favorite celebrities.

In order to overcome these behavioral challenges and execute the planned activities, we had to try various strategies and modify our plan as per the behavior of the children. We also integrated few Socio- emotional learning sessions as part of our planned activities to create self awareness about their emotions and overcoming it. We tried suggesting various strategies to overcome their anger through planned activities around the Story “Angry akku”.Activities like role-play, clay modelling, Story narration, discussions were planned around the idea of respecting others, treating everyone equally to help them understand the need and importance. After all this effort and planning there was some improvement in children behavior, when they tried hitting the other child in front of us they would look at us and say “I will control my anger”.This was very good development that we could see with this children. Moreover, they were very happy to be part of our sessions as we never hit or scold them and helped them understand maths and Language easily(Shared by Students). If we were able to see this granular change among these children through thoughtful activities and planning, definitely the teachers, parents and the School planning and collaborating together to integrate inclusive culture will have a greater impact on children understanding and behavior. The culture of inclusiveness should begin from the classroom by the teacher and then spreading it across to the School, community will have a profound impact on the development of children. It will help them shape their behavior and perspective towards inclusion.

Hence, in order to bring about the best in each and every child we would recommend the following suggestions/ recommendations to the School to reflect upon:

Teacher Preparation and Collaboration- Equipping the teacher to integrate the elements of inclusiveness in his/her classroom using different strategies with a thorough understanding of Universal design principles and Collaborating with the peer teacher in developing lesson plans, co-teaching, and sharing resources.

Involving Parents/families- There are various challenges associated with involving parents family, But, its also important that inclusion is not possible without parents/ families engagement. Understanding the Students and their families, communication with the parents about child, Involving parents and families in classroom activities, Allowing the families/parents to share their ideas will aid in developing inclusive environment.

School as a system- should promote inclusion both in and out of the classroom. They should encourage parents and teachers to use inclusive strategies. They should also take inclusive measures outside of the classroom.

An inclusive school culture requires a shift in the attitudes of all the stakeholders as well as the development practices that reinforce inclusive behavior. Real inclusion is about actions, not just words.

GHPS Devarachikkanahalli

GHPS Devarachikkanahalli Govt. Higher primary School is located in the South of Bangalore, near Bannerghatta Road. This School consists of around 400 students across the grades 1-8. There are around 10 teachers(Including HM). Medium of Instruction is Kannada. Among the 400 students, we got an opportunity to work with 40 children of grade 6. In Grade 6 there are children whose mother tongue is Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and Urdu. But, most of the children could converse in Kannada. As far as our observations are concerned, Socio- economic status of the parents is mostly lower middle class and middle class. Also, the educational background of parents is mostly literate/ educated and illiterate/ uneducated. The interaction/relationship between the Teacher and students seem to be Moderate. (No child has neither expressed/shared about their like/ dislike of a Teacher nor interactions with them). Corporal Punishments seem to exist (Teachers walk with stick to the classrooms).

Periodic observations of the classroom environment and General interaction with teachers revealed that teachers are not aware of Inclusive education practices and consider addressing needs of students with difficulties as beyond the limit of their resources and practices. Hence, It becomes difficult for a teacher to understand and address the learning difficulties that children are facing. Regular Classroom interactions with students revealed that they could not concentrate or engage in an activity and used to be restless, disturbing and hitting others in the classroom. It was difficult for us to manage their energy levels as they would jump, fight, hit and bully each other throughout the session. Even though we used to divide children in two classes it was difficult for us to manage their behavior. This could be due to the fact that they were forced or made to sit silent throughout the day in their regular classes which made them to exhibit behaviors like Restlessness, disturbing others and constantly disturbing the class. Hitting and bullying others (especially those that used to be quiet in the class), Pushing and pulling each other while during the activity, Constantly jumping and roaming in and around classrooms are the behaviors that were predominantly observed among these children during most of our sessions. There were also 2-3 instances of Boys bullying girls was observed. Initially boys were not ready to sit beside girls and they used to just go back to their place when they were forcefully made to sit with them for the activity.

Various strategies like splitting them into groups, activities to channelize their energy, discussions on understanding the need to devote their concentration in studies, respecting others and treating girls equally were integrated and practiced along with the planned activities throughout our program. Sometimes the session would completely go out of track because of their behavioral challenges, and we would completely change our plans. But, we would never lose our temper to scold or hit children. Slowly, children have begun to come out of their inhibitions to sit with girls and participate in the activity. However, other behavior like respecting others, treating everyone equally and other behaviors need to be put to right. For this to happen, School as a whole system should work together to implement inclusiveness within the School culture and Practices.

Hence, following are some of the suggestions/ recommendations that the School (A System as a whole) must reflect upon.

Teacher Preparation and Collaboration- Equipping the teacher to integrate the elements of inclusiveness in his/her classroom using different strategies with a thorough understanding of Universal design principles and Collaborating with the peer teacher in developing lesson plans, co-teaching, and sharing resources.

Involving Parents/families- There are various challenges associated with involving parents family, But, its also important that inclusion is not possible without parents/ families engagement. Understanding the Students and their families, communication with the parents about child, Involving parents and families in classroom activities, Allowing the families/parents to share their ideas will aid in developing inclusive environment.

School as a system- should promote inclusion both in and out of the classroom. They should encourage parents and teachers to use inclusive strategies. They should also take inclusive measures outside of the classroom.

An inclusive school culture requires a shift in the attitudes of all the stakeholders as well as the development practices that reinforce inclusive behavior. Real inclusion is about actions, not just words.

GHPS Ejipura

The Govt. Higher Primary School is in Ejipura, which is inSouth of Bangalore. In classes 1-7, there are about 450 students enrolled at this school. There are about 9 teachers (Including HM). For classes 5-7, the language of instruction is Kannada, and for classes 1 to 4, the language of instruction is English. The school has a good infrastructure, including a computer lab with 15 systems and internet access and a big auditorium available for events. There is no separate playground for students to play outdoer games, so they practise sports on the school campus.

We had the chance to work with 40 Seventh grade out of the 450 students. Children in Grade 7 speak Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, and Bhojpuri as their home language. However, the majority of the children could communicate in Kannada.They are marginalised in society because of their parents' socioeconomic status and the fact that the majority of them are single parents. Additionally, the majority of parents have no formal education. The interaction/relationship between the Teacher and students seem to be good.

Unlike other Schools, the behavior problem that we faced with Ejipura school children is very less. It was not so difficult to handle these children during the session. The children seemed to be very obedient and dedicated towards learning. They used to be very happy and enjoy being in our sessions and a few of them are long-absentees who occasionally attend our programme and have difficulty in following our sessions. Few students can perform basic operations such as addition, subtraction, and multiplication, but not all; many students have limited a contextual understanding of the operations and geometrical shapes. We tried various strategies such as the FLU model, the ist ide est beku game, the dice and hand cricket game, the multiplication factors representation, working with the area model in PhET simulations and through practise, enacting the characters' conversation on shapes, and so on. All of these helped children overcome misconceptions about those concepts, and a few children who were having difficulty doing addition and subtraction comfortably solved it using the FLU representation. Students also narrate the stories in other local languages and explain the meaning to the class during the language session.  Students' coordination was comparatively good, and they interacted well with their peers during assigned group activities.

Teachers Participation and collaboration:

The headmistress is very supportive and liberating when it comes to providing classes and rooms for our sessions but she was unable to attend our sessions because she was more involved in administrative tasks.

Other teachers shared their observations on class 7 students during one of our interactions with them that they found that students' ability to retain information in the classroom was too low and that a single concept could be taught more than once to help students understand it. They made an effort to meet the needs of the each students but were unsuccessful in doing so because of other departmental and administrative tasks.

Teachers who teach math and Kannada are very helpful to our programme. They wanted to participate in ITfC sessions but were unable to do most of the time because they were attending other classes and wishing to take part in training sessions on pedagogical methods and resource development.

Math teacher attended a few math sessions, observed each student's level of participation, made comparisons with her class, and was surprised by the participation of a few children. She was happy that we planned our activities to strengthen students' understanding of the fundamental concepts because she wasn't able to find the time to do that.

We given two days of digital training for teachers based on their needs, and we continued to assist them with the ongoing maintenance of the computer lab. Helping the headmistress with digital tasks related to administrative work as needed, and she also requests help and support from once in a while for academic tasks like downloading learning resources as well as worksheets and preparing question papers.

Involving Parents/families- We were able to participate in a parent meeting for the class 7 children and make it more meaningful with the help of the class teacher coordination. (Parents meeting at Ejipura - This page can be linked)

GMPS Munichinnappa Adugodi

The Govt. model higher primary school was located on Adugodi signal behind BOSCH company, which is in South of Bangalore and had approximately 400 students from 1st to 7th grade. For classes 1 to 4, the language of instruction is English, and for classes 5-7, the language of instruction is Kannada. There were 8 teachers(including HM), with some teaching Nali Kali classes from 1 to 3 and others teaching classes for remaining classes.

Class 6 has nearly 41 students enrolled, but only 36 attend regularly because some are long absentees and others are ill. Class 6 is a Kannada medium school with students who are multilingual in Kannada, Tamil, Hindi, and Telugu. The majority of the children, however, could communicate in Kannada. Because of their parents' socioeconomic status, they are socially marginalized. The interaction/relationship between the teacher and the students does not appear to be good. Corporal Punishment appears to exist (Teachers walk with stick to Classrooms). Teachers believe that it is difficult to manage children without a stick, and that children will only listen if a stick is used.

The students' coordination was comparatively poor. It is difficult to engage them in activities because they are not ready to listen to facilitator instructions. It was difficult for us to manage their energy levels as they would jump, fight, hit and bully each other so we used to divide children in smaller groups to manage them. School is going under renovating so there is no place to take students out so sometimes we handled whole class by projecting stories and discussed with them with local languages that time students participated at some point of time later session completely go out of track because of their behavioral challenges, that time we completely change our plans. But, we would never lose our temper to scold or hit children instead we trying out to reduce their energy by requesting them to stop talking, reasoaning out and asking them to close their eyes and listen our voice.

The school was under construction, so there is too much dust and no place to take students out of class when we were taking the school session. The classroom assigned to class 6 is relatively small, making it difficult to sit comfortably and even conduct activities for them. The session length is shorter than what we receive at other schools. Teachers weren't very helpful and were more concerned with finishing the syllabus than leaving classes on time for our programmes.

GHPS Bilekahalli

GHPS Bilekahalli Govt. Higher primary School is located in the South of Bangalore, near Bannergata road. This School consists of around 400 through grades 1-8. There are around 10 teachers (Including HM). Medium of Instruction is Kannada. The classes selected for our intervention program was grade 7. There are around 30 children in grade 7. Majority of the children in the grade 7 speak Kannada. But there are also children who speak Tamil, Telugu and Hindi. Socioeconomic background of the parents is mostly Lower middle class/ middle class. The interaction/relationship between the Teacher seems to be average.(No children has specifically come and told or either expressed anytime about their teacher during the sessions). Corporal Punishments does exist (Teachers walk with stick to Classrooms).

Unlike other Schools, the behavior problem that we faced with bilekahalli school children is very less. It was not so difficult to handle these children during the session. The children seemed to be very obedient and dedicated towards learning. They used to be very happy and enjoy being in DL sessions. But most of the children had specific misconceptions in addition and subtraction.

They exhibited inhibitions to use language(english) and when we talk in english they used to say ‘maam kannadadalli heli’.

We tried various strategies like FLU model, ist ide est beku game, dice game, and thorough practice along with language games like story narration, body parts, introducing myself etc, All these helped children overcome the misconceptions that they had in addition and subtraction and few children who were finding it very difficult to do addition and subtraction comfortably solve it using FLU representation. Also, few children are trying to talk to us in english giving away their inhibitions Since, we know that all children do not learn in same ways few children still have their difficulty which has to be looked and understood in detail in the coming year to help them overcome the learning difficulties.

Summary of School/classroom reflections

The five schools that were part of the project ‘Technology integration for inclusive education’ are located at South of bengaluru. Each School consisted of around 300-400 children across grade 1-8. We got an opportunity to work with 30-40 children from each Schools. Medium of Instruction in all the schools was Kannada. However, the schools also consisted of children from various languages like hindi, tamil, telugu, urdu, etc,.As far as our observations are concerned, Socio-economic status of the parents is mostly lower middle class and middle class. Also, the educational background of parents is mostly literate/ educated and illiterate/ uneducated. The interaction/relationship between the Teacher and students seem to be Moderate. (No child has neither expressed/shared about their like/ dislike of a Teacher nor interactions with them except in one school). Corporal Punishments seem to exist in all schools. (Teachers walk with stick to the classrooms). Periodic observations of the classroom environment and General interaction with teachers revealed that teachers are not aware of Inclusive education practices and consider addressing needs of students with difficulties as beyond the limit of their resources and practices. Hence, It becomes difficult for a teacher to understand and address the learning difficulties that children are facing.

Regular Classroom interactions with students in all the schools revealed that they could not concentrate or engage in an activity and are generally restless/ Some of the behavioral issues noticed in three schools while during the sessions were disturbing, hitting others, jumping, fighting, hitting and bullying (noticed prominently in one of the Schools) each other throughout the session. Even though we used to divide children in two classes it was difficult for us to manage their behavior. This could be due to the fact that they were forced or made to sit silent throughout the day in their regular classes which made them to exhibit behaviors like Restlessness, disturbing others and constantly disturbing the class. Hitting and bullying others (especially those that used to be quiet in the class), Pushing and pulling each other while during the activity, Constantly jumping and roaming in and around classrooms are the behaviors that were predominantly observed among these children during most of our sessions. There were also issues like inhibition among girls to talk or sit with boys, exclusion in classroom based on their language, Constant bullying or teasing the children who used to be quiet in the class.

Various strategies like splitting them into groups, activities to channelize their energy, discussions on understanding the need to devote their concentration in studies, respecting others and treating girls equally were integrated and practiced along with the planned activities throughout our program. Sometimes the session would completely go out of track because of their behavioral challenges, and we would completely change our plans. Sometimes, we would just spend time on discussions about such issues. In one of the School, we also integrated few socio- emotional learning sessions as part of our planned activities to create self awareness about their emotions and overcoming it when we found that the children were hard to control. We tried suggesting various strategies to overcome their anger through planned activities around the Story. All these strategies and activities helped children overcome anger, sensitize them to gender and language issues within their surrounding.

Even though children have slowly begun to come out of their inhibitions to sit with girls and participate in the activity, understand the need to respect others their other behavior like putting it into practice will happen only if there is enough opportunity for them to perceive inclusion within their School environment. For this to happen, We strongly feel that School as a whole system should work together to implement inclusiveness within the School culture and Practices.

Hence, following are some suggestions/ recommendations that the School (A System as a whole) must reflect upon.

Teacher Preparation and Collaboration- Equipping the teacher to integrate the elements of inclusiveness in his/her classroom using different strategies with a thorough understanding of Universal design principles and Collaborating with the peer teacher in developing lesson plans, co-teaching, and sharing resources.

Involving Parents/families- There are various challenges associated with involving parents family, But, its also important that inclusion is not possible without parents/ families engagement. Understanding the Students and their families, communication with the parents about child, Involving parents and families in classroom activities, Allowing the families/parents to share their ideas will aid in developing inclusive environment.

School as a system- should promote inclusion both in and out of the classroom. They should encourage parents and teachers to use inclusive strategies. They should also take inclusive measures outside of the classroom.

An inclusive school culture requires a shift in the attitudes of all the stakeholders as well as the development practices that reinforce inclusive behavior. Real inclusion is about actions, not just words.