TIIE Language Module

Introduction

This module has been developed as a part of the Technology Integration in Inclusive Education (TIIE) project by IT for Change. The project aims to identify innovative and contextual inclusive pedagogical approaches for students in grades 6 and 7 through technology integration. Inclusive education allows students with different needs and skills to attend conventional schools and get equal learning opportunities tailored to meet their needs. It is founded on the idea that all learners, regardless of their socioeconomic backgrounds, gender, physical or mental abilities, or range of skills, should study together. It recognises that all children have the capacity to learn, takes into account the different learning styles of children, creates a conducive environment for learning, and develops appropriate instructional strategies and tools. Rather than being diagnostic in its approach, this module seeks to identify the most effective strategies for English language teaching in a structured manner to provide ample opportunities for practice in an accommodating environment.

The module has been designed based on various teaching methodologies under Inclusive Education which encompasses considerations and strategies to support the diversity of learners in the given context by minimizing barriers to learning and helping each learner achieve their full potential. The following approaches have been considered in developing the module:

Table 1: Inclusive Education approaches used in the module design.

Approach	Guidelines/ principles	Sample strategies for implementation
Universal Design for Learning (UDL)	Provide multiple means of engagement representation action and expression	Use of content that is relevant to students’ context and reflects diversity. Multiple options for engaging with the discourse such as print, digital, and audio narration. Options for text enlargement, screen brightness and contrast. Videos have captions, and there are transcripts for audio narration (in both English and Kannada) Students are allowed to choose how they wish to respond to the activities (verbal response, oral presentation, in writing, through graphic organisers etc.) - to cater to different types of learners and multiple intelligences.
Multi-sensory structured language teaching (MSLT)	Use of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic-tactile (VAKT) pathways simultaneously to enhance memory and learning of written language.	showing a picture/ realia pronouncing the word clearly and encouraging students to repeat it students act the word out students write the word in air or sand while pronouncing it. writing the word in their notebooks
Differentiated instruction (DI)	DI entails modifications to: content (the specific readings, research, or materials, students will study), process (how the lesson is designed for students), grouping (how students are arranged in the classroom or paired up with other students). products (the kinds of output students will be working on), practice (how facilitators deliver instruction to students), assessment (how teachers measure what students have learned)	Clear, simple and repeated instructions. Content adapted to students’ interests, familiarity with the themes, academic readiness, and language proficiency level. Options to adapt content to learners with different competencies or proficiency levels within the same grade A multilingual approach to English language teaching where students can respond in multiple languages and facilitators can provide support in the languages spoken by students Activities that involve mixed ability group or pair work. More individual attention, learning-support to students facing difficulties. Assessment that is not purely in written form but through listening and speaking activities, visual representations, etc.
Collaborative Learning	Using group work to enhance learning. Groups of two or more learners work together to solve problems, complete tasks, or learn new concepts. Promotes development of communicative, interpersonal and intrapersonal skills.	Making goals and expectations for each activity clear Setting rules for language and collaboration Mixed ability grouping to encourage peer learning Dividing the class into smaller groups (6-8 students each) to maximise effectiveness Encouraging active listening Evaluating each group on its own merit
Reflective Teaching	Following the reflective cycle of: Planning Acting Observing Reflecting	take notice/ observe/ focus on one particular aspect of all of the massive stimuli in the environment. Look, listen carefully and note children’s body language, facial expressions, gestures, tone of voice, etc. Record learning, questions, reflections

Aims

The module aims to address these issues and identify effective practices or teaching strategies that can be applied across schools to create a barrier-free learning environment for all students. Owing to the behavioural challenges witnessed in students across schools, content selection and activity design will be done in a manner that can help improve students’ socioemotional learning and interpersonal skills as well as help them develop a growth mindset. The module has intentionally used themes familiar to students and which have also been previously covered in their prescribed language textbooks.

By the end of the module, the students should have developed or re-developed language literacy and some basic communication competency in English. Like any other language, English has the capacity to foster personal development and aid in the formation of a person's general knowledge, positive attitudes, critical thinking skills, moral values, and artistic sensibility. Since students were found to have a low exposure to the language in schools and in their homes, the module aims to provide a wider exposure to different types of discourses in English to help them become aware of meaningful vocabulary and the correct usage of grammatical structures. The stories that learners read and listen to, the topics they discuss, the role plays they enact, and the activities they engage in, will all have thematic links with issues such as personal and community values including gender, social justice and democracy, health and nutrition, and the environment. They will learn to understand and tackle these issues and develop values as they listen, read and speak.

The overall focus of this module is to work with teachers and students to identify challenges and barriers to language learning and pedagogical approaches that will be contextual and inclusive so as to benefit students of all abilities and levels of competency. The module also includes the following aims:

• to enable learners to engage creatively, express individual thoughts, ideas, experiences and values as a part of their personal development
• to enable students to see learning as an enjoyable activity and meeting different learning needs through appropriate teaching styles
• to create a learning environment where every child feels safe, empowered and is able to express themselves
• to facilitate meaningful interaction in a multilingual and multicultural society.
• to encourage respect for the dignity of others and acceptance of the equality of human beings, despite individual differences.
• to develop self-confidence, positive attitudes, values and understanding of individual, local, social and cultural issues, develop a sense of individual responsibility and to enable students to read and talk about these issues.

Rationale and Methodology

The design of the module was influenced by a baseline study conducted to understand students’ language proficiency levels. The baseline engaged approximately 175 students from five schools in a series of activities wherein students worked in pairs or individually to complete the assigned tasks. These tasks were used as checkpoints for facilitators to learn more about students’ levels of learning, cognitive skills, and difficulties. Some of the findings were as follows:

• Need to set some common ground rules for behavior for better interaction, engagement cooperation and classroom management.
• Need to accommodate multilingual and multilevel learners and design activities that cater to high student strength.
• Need to guide students away from copying answers.
• Might need to have a session to revise previously covered concepts such as letters and basic vocabulary in English.
• Need to work on reading skills since in English, 26% of students can only recognise the letters and 21% can only read simple words, and only 13% of students on average were able to fluently read a short story.
• On average, only 38.8% of students were able to understand phrases in English and correctly identify the object in a given picture.
• Interpersonal skills seem to be gravely affected in students perhaps due to lack of opportunities for social interactions during the pandemic-induced school closures. Instances of bullying, and use of inappropriate language have been observed across schools and grades. Despite schools being co-educational, both boys and girls are unwilling to interact and collaborate with peers of the opposite sex.

This module is designed to be learner-centric and uses storytelling as a pedagogical tool to develop listening, speaking and reading skills in English. Children enjoy listening to stories and are familiar with narrative conventions. Stories provide an ideal introduction to a second or third language as they present language in a repetitive and memorable context. Stories can also provide the starting point or act as a springboard for a wide variety of related language and learning activities, and offer an ideal resource for meeting diverse learning needs. They can help children understand the overall meaning of a story with the help of illustrations (which provide clues about the meaning) and facilitator support.

The intention is to not merely read the stories by themselves and check for reading comprehension, but to enable an immersive language experience. Customized digital resources have been developed based on select stories in order to facilitate interaction in English. Stories from Pratham books’ Storyweaver have been used and some have been repurposed to create audio-visual resources in local languages using FOSS tools like Xerte, Audacity and Kdenlive to help apply a multilingual approach to teaching. Some of the activities included in this module are based on KITE’s E-Language Lab software (an initiative by the Kerala Education Department). They include themes such as empathy, teamwork, managing emotions, and other interpersonal skills. The digital audio-visual resources contain level-appropriate listening and reading components, as well as assessments based on comprehension, vocabulary and grammar which can be used by learners individually or in groups, so that children can then respond according to their own language proficiency level and cognitive ability.

This module consists of 3 units. Each unit contains 2 story-based resources along with other accompanying activities. The activities included in the interactive audio-visual resources that have been developed serve as a tool for assessment. Qualitative assessment of students behaviours, attitudes and engagement will also be undertaken while the group activities are being facilitated. Towards the end of the second unit, an activity will be carried out wherein students’ listening skills, vocabulary, sentence formation and ability to read short sentences will be assessed and recorded for further analysis.

Skills being addressed in the module

Listening skills

The listening process has three stages – hearing, processing and evaluating. The objectives are to help learners develop the ability to :

• receive information – general and specific
• distinguish between sounds
• formulate attitudes and opinions
• arrange thoughts, ideas or events in a sequence

How the module aims to address the different barriers affecting listening and comprehension:

1. Linguistic barriers (difference in the linguistic levels of the speaker and listener) The digital resources have been created in both Kannada and in English including supporting text in both languages. Facilitators will also provide support in other languages such Tamil and Hindi/ Urdu and Tamil for students who have migrated from these language-speaking states.
2. Use of new vocabulary and ‘difficult’ words The vocabulary used includes a lot of simple and commonly used words as per student levels. The exercises provided at the end of the story include the new vocabulary to be introduced along with a corresponding image.
3. Psychological (lack of interest from the part of the listener) The stories used have been selected based on themes and contexts familiar to the students and the corresponding activities have been designed to keep the students engaged be it in individual, pair or group work.
4. Physiological (partial or total hearing impairment) Although no such student has been identified, most activities include corresponding texts in both English and in Kannada.

Speaking skills

Speaking is the transmission of ideas and involves a number of sub skills such as articulation, enunciation, pronunciation and voice modulation. The objectives are to help learners develop the ability to:

• produce English phonemes in isolation and in combination as well
• speak with apt words, and structures spontaneously
• Regulate speech according to the context

The activities included focus on areas for developing speaking skills using mechanics of speaking (pronunciation), usage (vocabulary and language functions) and cultural and social contexts.

Reading skills

Reading is the reception of meaning from the written language involving interpreting, evaluating and constructing meaning. The focus here will be to help the learners develop the ability to:

• understand/ revise recognition of letters, words and organization of text
• make inferences based on illustrations provided in stories
• scan for specific information

Students will be provided with multiple learning discourses and encouraged to read out loud, and will be taught how to break down words or sentences for the same if necessary.