There are many teaching strategies that can be employed to actively engage students in the learning process, including group discussions, problem solving, case studies, role plays, journal writing, learning activities, and structured learning groups. The benefits of using such activities improve critical thinking skills, increase retention and transfer of new information, increase motivation and improve interpersonal skills. Students should be encouraged to do things by themselves in order to identify problems, to fill gaps and find solutions in a collaborative way. There were expressions of optimism that such independent approaches could lead to success, and teachers could be surprised by students’ performance. Effective activity based learning process is becoming very famous.
Students are more likely to feel confident about themselves as learners if they can rely on their own resources for completing assignments, studying for tests, and achieving success in school. At the core of successful and lifelong learning, is self-regulation. Self-regulation requires a student to be meta-cognitively, motivationally, and behaviourally active in regulating his/her own thinking and learning. It involves awareness of personal goals, and of strengths, weaknesses, and interests given instructional goals, environmental expectations, and conditions of learning and performance.
In a sense, a student’s ability to regulate his/her own learning demands the ultimate integration of neuro developmental abilities. Self-regulated learners are attentive, focused, and productive. They set goals for themselves, and use a planned approach to learning. Self-regulated learners keep track of their understanding and their progress, and reward themselves for their successes. They use problem-solving strategies and memory techniques when appropriate. They learn to think critically about the demands of the task at hand and the availability of time, resources, etc. In short, self-regulated learners are intentional, active, and reflective.
Basic Learning in Class
Taking the daily attendance is a ritual in most schools, with the teacher calling out the names and the pupils responding. In the ABL method, this process is made child-friendly. There is an Attendance Card for each child, to be filled up everyday by the child. Children love the sense of trust that this procedure implies. When they assemble in the morning, one student from each class level in the room distributes the Attendance cards and collects the filled up ones. The entire process is orderly. It puts the responsibility for marking attendance on the child and not on the teacher. This is accepted as the effective activity based learning process.
Students’ Involvement
We have all heard about teachers losing their voices because of their shouting and screaming, to keep the children quiet. In the schools with ABL, there are no apparent discipline problems. The structured learning materials have their own logic, which supports the children’s involvement in reading, writing and calculating. Children find that they can learn at any speed, without being taunted by classmates or scolded by the teacher. Also, there is no scrambling for adult attention. Discipline is intrinsic to the material and internalized by the children.
Out of the Boundary of Text Books
The text book is not the only source of knowledge, just as the teacher is not the sole authority. The text book is integrated into the materials. For instance, one of the steps of the ladder contains an instruction to read a specified page of the text book. Clearly, when a child goes step by step on the ladder, his steady progress gives him the skills to read the connected page in the text book. Of course, if he needs help, he could ask the teacher when he is in the teacher-assisted group, or just go across to where she is sitting. Students appear to have no fear of being reprimanded by the teacher. The conventional distance has been bridged here.
Absence is not an Issue in ABL
Generally, one of the constant problems of schooling is absenteeism. For example, if a child is sick for a week, he cannot follow the lesson when he gets back. He has the feeling of running a race he can never win. However, ABL has a simple strategy to take care of missed classes. The mastering of a skill is not a collective exercise. The child’s work is individual. Therefore, he goes to the points on the ladders, where he left off and starts learning from there.
In rural areas, harvest time is when children are needed on the farm. Their short-term absence from school is no longer a problem. Time away from school can be made up. Fairs and festivals can be enjoyed without their seriously disrupting a child’s learning activities.
Focus on Written Activity
Repetition of a lesson acts as reinforcement. That is accepted pedagogy. But instead of sing-song chanting of tables or whatever, the child in ABL writes on the blackboard first, his notebook next and finally in the workbook. Since he writes the same material three times, the pattern (be it spelling or grammar), gets well established. Whatever the lesson (names of animals, masculine and feminine nouns or singular and plural words), the strengthening of the connections by repetition, is certainly achieved.
This is accepted as the effective activity based learning process.
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