TIIE - Program Report

4. Program Design & Methodology – APD (include whatever is already there in program design document; include baseline report link)

      planned processes – reaching out to teachers, teacher educators, officials, CRP workshops, BIERT interactions

      modules link - TBD

5. Implementation – GMP, NB, RB

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 recognizes 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.

how sessions were organized

Maths - GMP

 

how planned activities happened -

Cluster meetings- NB

Sharing inclusive strategies in teaching few concepts in Mathematics and Implementation of Language lab and in the Cluster Meetings:

Cluster meetings were held once a month. Different South-3 zones where 2-3 clusters of different schools are combined in one particular school for learning sharing by teachers on various pedagogical strategies. Following our CRP Workshop, CRPs were invited to attend cluster meetings to share our work. Each cluster had 20–30 teachers and two CRPs. Our primary objective in participating in the cluster meeting was to share our understandings of inclusive education, demonstrate inclusive strategies in teaching for a few concepts of mathematics, and introduce the Language Lab work, which was customized digital resources developed based on our experiences and learnings with the KITE E-Language Lab study. During the meeting, one of the stories was shown using the projector, speaker, tabs, and so on. Teachers were given tabs and laptops to explore various stories in various languages; perhaps they found it more interesting to use in their classroom. Language lab was converted to mobile version due to a lack of adaptive technology at schools, as it is easily accessible to teachers in the offline version. The kiwix app was installed on their phones, which encouraged the teachers to use it in their classrooms. So far, the team has attended 9 cluster meetings for both primary and higher primary school teachers, reaching out to nearly 250 teachers.

CRP workshops - RB

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BIERT - GMP

Block inclusive education resource teachers (BIERTs), we got to know about them from the BEO office and made arrangements to speak with them.There are four BIERT’s in Bangalore South 3 block, two for primary and two for secondary school, and they specialise in Learning disabilities, Visual and hearing impairement, and Mental reatardation during their Bachelor of education training. We met these resource persons informally for about 3 hours over two days with the goal of discussing our TIIE project work, learning about their work nature, pedagogical support, teachers training from the department on IE, and government schemes/facilities to support CWSN. Nearly 347 CWSN students in Bangalore's south 3 block were divided into three groups: those who attended school at home, those who were prepared for school, and those who attended school but had certain disabilities as listed by the department. 50 students from higher primary and high school in South 3 Block are currently struggling with ID and LD. For severe CWSN students (those unable to attend school), the government arranges twice-weekly psychotherapy sessions. It also provides MR kits and scholarships for those with UDID (Unique disability identification card). We are in contact with these BIERTs in order to obtain mutual support for hospital diagnoses for some children who have learning difficulties. In the discussion, we focused on the IE resource centre, whether they maintain any IE resources, if so, what kind of resources they have, and whether they are helpful to our resources, as well as sharing our IE resources with the resource centre.

NIMHANS - GMP

During our school visit, we found that some of the students were having learning difficulty in the classroom teaching-learning activities. We discussed the children with their teachers and began observing and recording their movements in the classroom. We designed a few activities for their level and conducted some individual interactions with those children to better understand their difficulties, and we decided to get diagnoses for a few children, for which we met with BIERT's and sought their assistance. Since the BIERTs were preoccupied with their work, they suggested taking them to the hospital and informing their school HM. We select three students from one of our chosen schools who are experiencing learning difficulties and meet with their parents with the assistance of teachers to gain their support. We first went to Sanjay Ghandi Hospital, and then we understood that only NIMHANS and Victoria hospitals in Bangalore care for children with learning disabilities. Then, with the presence of parents and teachers, three children were taken to the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at NIMHANS, where they having undergone detailed and comprehensive clinical evaluation and assessment. For one child they have been able to identify that the child have severe intellectual disability disorder and owing to the child’s difficulties we registered to the child’s Unique Disability ID(UDID) as per the ‘Rights to of person with Disabilities(Ammendments) Rules’ (2009), Government of India. This process has been initiated and is likely to take about 2 to 3 months for completion. Considering child’s learning and parent’s financial and logistical difficulties we plan to put her in a residential special school called Samartham trust located in HSR layout based on their parents' wishes. For other 2 childrens due to some NIMHANS hospital procedures, one student referred to Victoria hospital for an IQ test because her appointment is not until September, and another student referred to Venkateshwara hospital in Tirupathi because he has an Andra state Adhar and ration card. However, we hope to complete the diagnosis of these two children by the end of April.

Teacher's workshop (DL)) - RB

Resource centre setup- RB

Event based camps- GMP - NB

7. Reflections on the program

1. Students (feedback) –

During our continuous interactions with the student from different school have given their valuable feedback which are listed below on the following:

1. Mathematics

The mathematics module aimed to address the need of the individual child in the Foundational numeracy such as FLU, Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication.

Among these sessions Most of the children liked the FLU Model as they were able to understand the Place value and relate to solve the Number Operation. Students were given practice both manually and in the system using Tux Math, GCompris and phet simulation based on the level of the child. The students shared their opinion as Most of the sessions were conducted in the small groups It helped to engage in the activities, also desired to focus on individual learning of the students which develops the deeper understanding of the concepts. It creates a platform to get motivated by their peers towards the common goal and work together to support each others learning.

Mostly all the students revealed that Multiplication concept has helped them to comprehend the meaning of multiplication as groups of objects to find the product of any single digit number, Construction of the table was found easy using the number of lines and dots, Multiplication of two digits and more was the challenge we faced during regular method but After introducing to Area model helped us to learn in a very simple and interesting way.

"Modalu namage lekka madakke barthililla iga namage lekka madakke barakke matte munche ganitha andre kashta anshtitu adre iga aa bhava yella hoythu"

There were few games related to foundational numeracy which helped them to relate it while solving the sums, also enhanced the mental ability of thinking and quick calculations.

2. Language:

The module was designed to be learner-centric and used storytelling as a pedagogical tool to develop listening, speaking and reading skills in English. All the Children enjoyed listening to stories and are familiar with narrative conventions. Stories provide an ideal introduction to Multilingual approach based on the students linguistic backgrounds. Most of the students liked the small group activities such as (Body parts game, Model for sticking body parts, Introducing yourself by passing the parcel, skit, poster making, ) etc This helped to participate effectively as a group, learning in a collaborative situation had greater knowledge acquisition, retention of material, developed problem solving and reasoning abilities, communication skills, than before.

Most of the students in different schools were migrated from different schools or different states had a very low exposure to English Language so those students have said that "yella kathegalannu bera bera bashay yalli torisiddu, mattu kelavomma niva aa katheyannu bera basheyalli heliddu" adu tumabane upayogavagidde yekendare navu bera bera basheyalli artha madikondvi, matte bera bashe kaliyalu protsaha needidira"

In the DL sessions The Language lab was implement in two schools and students have shared that "they enjoyed listening and Reading to all the stories and answering the questions in the different activities

Overall feedback

• All the facilitators were very friendly and Polite, they never spoke harshly/ raised their voices/ scolded/ hit us.
• They also motivated us to participate in all the activities, perhaps gave an opportunity to express our thoughts/ opinion.
• Most of the time we were disturbing the facilitators by creating some new sense in the classroom, Inspite of all these challenges they helped us to learn the concepts which we were finding difficult.
• DL sessions has impacted to our effective learning as it created an interest to use them, before we had a fear of using the systems but now we are independent to on the systems and use it in a useful way.

Few Suggestions by the students:

• Few students in one of the school felt that they would learn more effective if there was no disturbance in the class.
• Majority of the students and teachers are willing to continue the sessions for the Next Academic year.

AS, MI - quant of coded part to derive categories, themes; NB – summary

feedback from event based (forms, videos) - TBD

2. Teachers (feedback)

5 schools teachers(AY), teachers met through cluster meetings (NB, AS), event based camps (GMP)

3. HMs

HMs not being able to give time and other workload. Challenges in each school.

School info written by AY

8. Analysis (our perspective)

      analysis of the findings, what could be the reasons, implications, etc.

      case studies – hyperlink externally (RS to review and edit)

      school

   • students

Reflect on learnings from all sessions including those focussed on SEL. Need for socio-emotional support to students. Working on mental health and wellbeing. Giving them a space to share, empower them, help them deal with it and cope.

Effect of gadgets, movies, TV

They have very limited space, no playground

   • teachers

   • parents perspectives, challenges, awareness,

      administrative support

   • infra

   • staff, vacancies

   academic support

   • BIERT

   • CRP

   • block resource centre – IE resources wasn’t already existing

   • inclusive edu resource center

   medical/health support

   • NIMHANS

9. Recommendations

   • School & Teachers

   • School system

       ◦ Academic

       ◦ Administrative

       ◦ Policy