Science activities in early primary grades: through manipulating common material

In the early primary grades age: 5-7 years the play way method to give a feel for processes of science is appropriate. Besides providing hands-on opportunities with water, sand, clay and pebbles; it is desirable to develop a few basic science concepts among children for which, the use of other readily available materials like papers, straws, rubber bands etc. can be taken up with them. The paper advocates and exemplifies the play-way activities for science instruction with readily available materials for early primary grades. Five activities each with paper, straws and polythene sheet were developed and tried out with five year old children of pre-primary class.

Keywords:  Hands-on activities, manipulative experience, play-way method.

The transition intervention from home to school language: raising the achievement scores of early primary students

Under an Education for All (EFA) project, efforts were initiated to make transition from home language to school language for children of alternative learning system. A comparison with the bench mark and post-test studies on the performance of children in a tribal and non-tribal block, it was seen that at grade two level, the maximum gain was seen with about 50% tribal children becoming fairly good performers in language, i.e., at par with tribal children. A gain in performance score of 20% was seen among tribal children due to the transitional interventions as revealed by the bench mark and post-tests in achievement scores..

Keywords: Transitional intervention, achievement gain, home language, school language.

Literacy board games for school beginners improve their visual discrimination