The Hindu Business Line : Project to boost language skills in AP school children

AIMED at developing strategies to bring about quality learning in the classrooms and make the school a comprehensive resource centre with stakeholder participation, the CAP-SCOPE Project (Child & Police - School Community Partnership in Education), an initiative catalysed by the Andhra Pradesh State Police and Dr Reddy's Foundation, has decided to work in close collaboration with the Education Department.

A strategy called `Katha Kalamu' was developed by the project to address the deficiencies in language skills amongst children. In a press release here on Friday, the CAP project said the initiative is currently being implemented in schools with positive results from January this year.

The CAP project is of the view that there was a need to enhance child centred and competency based opportunities in the classroom to provide for all four skills - listening, speaking, reading and writing.

`Katha Kalamu' is being implemented in 50 schools across four mandals of Hyderabad and Balanagar mandal of Ranga Reddy districts. It has evoked positive response from both teachers and children, the release said.

According to Dr Reddy's Foundation Executive Director, Ms Nalini Gangadharan, the focus is on the traditional game of story building, where each child contributes a sentence to build the story.

The subsequent steps are then structured to draw out various aspects of the child's cognitive skills, which in turn help in clearing out the language deficiency. The learning then shifts gear and moves to influence other areas.

The result is a story developed exclusively by the children, which then subsequently becomes the teaching aid to be integrated into the curriculum as well as an effective reinforcement education tool for the teacher, she said.

The schools and the resource team on deputation working on the Project from the Education Department shared and demonstrated the first level of interventions and innovations successfully evolved and tested at a programme called `Spandana-2004' organised here on Friday by the CAP-SCOPE project.

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