One day a teacher in the staff room asked me, “Why do you keep doing different activities in the class, how and when will you teach?” For a second, I didn’t know what to say. I collected my thoughts and said I love to connect to students. She continued, “Are you saying we don’t?” Again I had no answer, maybe I had but didn’t want to say anything.

As I was leaving the staffroom I picked up my flash cards, and activity sheets, this teacher came to me and said, “Can I come to your class and watch you teach?” I said she was welcome to. That day I was going to take up the grammar (prepositions) in the classroom. This was class-5. I had flashcards with prepositions written on it. I also carried with me a chart paper on which I had pasted a picture story that I had taken from the Sunday newspaper.

This cartoon story had various characters sitting under, standing near, on and hanging from trees.

Once the students settled down I announced that I was going to tell them a story. I wrote the prepositions on the board and told them I would be using these words in my story and they have to pay attention and listen. I narrated the cartoon story and each time I used a preposition I could see a spark of understanding in their eyes.

Once the narration was done I divided them into groups and gave each of the groups a photocopy of the newspaper story. Each of these had arrows for which the students had to write the correct preposition. I gave them small laminated cards with one preposition written on each card. I asked them to place the cards against the arrows.

My instructions:

• - One student to recollect and re-tell the story
• - Others to point out the prepositions used
• - Look at the arrow and identify the preposition to be placed against it.
• - 15 minutes were allotted for the activity

I went around observing what each of the groups was doing. I clarified their doubts, if any. At the end of 15 minutes they managed to get almost all of the prepositions right. I had not used the term ‘preposition’ till then. I then gave them a worksheet with a short paragraph that had blanks where they were told to fill in one word from the given list. Most of them got it right. I spent extra time with the ones who didn’t get it.

Next day I introduced the term ‘preposition’ pre-position---------- a word that comes before a noun/pronoun.

Before

I told them another story with prepositions and gave a photocopy of the story to each one of them and asked them to underline the prepositions. This was done as an individual activity.

This teacher who accompanied me understood what I meant by ‘connecting with students.

It takes effort, passion and the will to think of ways to get a concept across to students.

Gleanings:

• - Be a creative teacher
• - Connect to students, learning will automatically happen