If only we, as humans, would listen more than we speak, we would realise there is so much to learn. And if this habit is inculcated right from childhood, it could do wonders. This is what Primary school teacher V Jyotsna Rani also reasoned when she authored a paper titled All Ears - No Learning Fears and even secured herself a Innovation and Experimentation Award in 2019 from the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan.
Children don't actively listen, that's a fact that every teacher is dealing with today and so is Jyotsna Rani, who teaches classes I to VI. "This is why they don't excel at oral or written tests either — they don't listen in class," says the teacher from Kendriya Vidyalaya Tirumalagiri. So, she conducted a small experiment with two tools that young children adore the most — storytelling and drawing. She gave out drawing sheets and instructed the students to draw as per the story being narrated in real-time. The story began like so: On one morning at the beach, a green Sun rose against a blue sky and shined brightly down upon the beach with pink sand. Now, only the children who are really listening would know that, as per the story, the Sun needs to be green and the sand on the beach pink, the others would simply colour the Sun the yellow.
With this experiment, children grew more alert and really started focusing in class so that they could get their answers right. "This teaches them an important lesson that unless they listen, their speaking, learning and writing skills might not be as fruitful," shares the Visakhapatnam-born teacher. Now, this may sound like a simple experiment conducted over two academic years but it has produced notable results, as 85 per cent of the students who took up this exercise secured A and A+ grades in their exams. The lesson learnt here is, "Involve students in unique ways so their performance can improve," she states. So, what's next? "I want to learn handwriting analysis so that I can detect behavioural problems in children. I also want to help improve their handwriting," she says.
The objective of the experiment was:
- To enable students to develop their listening skills
- To enhance accuracy in understanding, remembering and absorption
- To develop better attention
- To equip students with the necessary training in listening
