Pre-primary education, which is the pre-requisite education given to a child before reaching to first standard, is provided to students in all private school. No doubt in some of the districts of Jammu and Kashmir like Anantnag, the government schools are enrolling the students to KG “Kindergarten”, but still the KG “Kindergarten” classes are not officially operating and regestred in all the government school of state. The schools in some districts are yet give admissions to pre-primary classes. As compared to private schools, though the pre-primary classes are existing in many of the government schools, but still the schools have not available all those facilities required by pre-primary students which are available in private schools.
However in a significant move from last one year, school education department has taken an appreciable step to start KG in all the government schools of state, for which a few schools were equipped with sophisticated Smart Classrooms for Pre-primary students. But to make government schools feasible for pre-primary classes, government has to take a bold step to provide a Smart Classroom to each and every school in the state.
In addition to feasibility in terms of class room and equipments, there are other aspects ” the social and philosophical aspects ” for pre-primary classes , which deal with teaching and caring the students at their early childhood, in the classroom.
Parents remain always compassionate towards their children with a good care, affection and love. However the concern of parents towards their offsprings is much higher during their early years of development. This tenderhearted care of parents for their children, during the period, which they spend in the soothing lap of their mothers, makes them to feel incomplete, once they are separated from their mothers for pre-primary schooling. Even parents also consider their children with more value than the lives of themselves during the period of their early childhood.
Think when a parent brings his child to enroll him for pre-primary in a school , which is a compulsion for every parent do in the society, how parents would feel by parting themselves from their most affectionate part of life, the child. They unwillingly handover their sweet heart “the child” to the teachers with a hope not of only teaching, but also of a good care from teachers.
The teachers who are also parents can imagine and recall the first day of their child in school. For the first day of a child in school, parent’s every beat of the heart-palpitation feels the separation of his child. Family members eagerly wait for the return of their beloved child from school on the very first day in the school and often start to discuss about him like , “what our baby would be doing, what he would eat in the school, he may be missing us” and so on.
When the child comes back to home after the first day of his pre-primary schooling, the family members welcome him as if the brave and successful warrior/soldier comes back after winning the battle. As per my personal openion, his first day in school is not less than the day spent by a warrior/ soldier in the battle field and to welcome him in such a greatful way is not wrong, because he deserves to be welcomed.
Now, how the teacher can make it possible that the child, the new comer to school, may feel the first sight of comfort in school without getting any sort of fearness or nervousness, is only possible, if the teacher will approach the new comer with a beautiful welcome note.
Keeping in view a few discussed aspects of life of a child in early childhood, the role of pre-primary teaching is not so easy but a hard nut to crack. A good pre-primary teacher must keep each and every need of child under consideration in order to deal with a him, in the way that the child may feel no or least difference from home to school. He should communicate with the new comer in a sweet voice and in a polite way.
At the very first day, a student should be treated with a good reception. A teacher needs to bring every possible effort in action to keep the child smiling during his first day in school, so that an attractive atmosphere may be felt by new comer. A teacher has to conversate with him with a smiling face to prepare the student to come school willingly the day after.
A child who comes out of his home to school, has to explore the things outside in the environment, and the duty to guide him for that purpose, is to be performed by a pre-primary teacher. This is possible by the proper way of teaching. So far as the teaching strategies are concerned, if we look up on the difference between primary and pre-primary teaching methods, there is a big difference.
In preprimary a student need to know the different processes and the different things existing in environment like ; to learn the names of animals, fruits, vegetables and to classify them , learn the basic required selfhelp-skills to make himself independent, to learn basic words of language, to learn basic manners etc. Apart from that gradually a pre-primary student can be taught the alphabets, and digits also.
There is also a big philosophy behind, how to care and teach the pre-primary classes, of which some of the techniques were recently taught to me and my colleagues a few months before , when we attended a five days training programme on Early Childhood Care and Education at SIE Srinagar. But the main thing, which I think is must for teaching the pre-primary is that we should make them learn by indirect way. That means, we need to understand their interests and make their interests a track to inculcate teaching through that very track to them. Because the children at early childhood want to go with their own interests and their attention can’t be diverted by force, which may lead to a negative outcome.
The main and workable modes of teaching KG classes are rhymes with actions, showing picture charts of different themes , interesting story telling with good morals, showing concrete objects/ models, playing etc. All these activities are mostly admired by little kids. Moreover when the children at this stage are made to perform activities in groups, it can yield the better results.
However, as there are no hard and fast rules for teaching. Keeping in view the individual differences, a teacher can himself apply his philosophy and can bring other kinds of technical skills in to action to make these little students learn in a much better way.
(The author is is a Rehbar-e-Taleem teacher. His views are personal)
