Young Creative Writers in English through WhatsApp classes

My first paper presented at an International Conference on 26th June 2021

Good afternoon to the respected Chairperson, moderators,co-presenters, delegates, and viewers!

First of all, I would like to thank RIESI Bengaluru and ITfC for conducting this International Conference to overcome the difficulties to reach our children by sharing the educational initiatives taken by various nations.

I am D.Pushpa, an English teacher, working in Panchayat Union Middle School, Gurrency, Coonoor, The Nilgiris,  Tamil Nadu, India.

 Last year I had conducted WhatsApp classes to involve students in online education. Two students emerged as young creative writers from an utter remote village school. This is the success story that I am intending to share with you through my paper on Creative writers in English through WhatsApp classes.

1.Newsreaders of Currency

which I created on 16 August  2019 to keep in touch with students, alumni, parents, and well-wishers of our school. Through this, we organized awareness for the students during the pandemic. Well-wishers of our school kindled our students through drawing competitions and feedback from them motivated our students to do better. Students updated songs, tongue twisters, and phonic drills after writing in their  English notebooks.

2.Online class group

This group elicited our students to participate in the oral competition on the great Tamil poet Bharathiyar's Birthday from 1st December 2019. From January 2020 I shared the online Educational Radio link which is easy to access and free from unwanted websites. Children regularly shared a page of handwriting by observing my YouTube videos.

3.Creative writers 2021

 I created this WhatsApp group on 27-2-2021 to do exploratory action research under the meticulous guidance of Professor Ravi Narayan Chakrakodi while I was doing CELT training at  RIESI Bengaluru. I briefly explained to the parents that teaching the lesson is not at all possible for me during the pandemic. But with the support of parents, I can guide them to become creative writers. So that they can utilize their time productively. I selected the students from the 5th to 8th standard. Out of 22 only 17 parents possessed smartphones. I conducted a pretest by providing a topic a day like myself, my family, my mother, my mother tongue, my best friend, tongue twisters, etc. To grow their interest level I began with word games like anthakshari, coin new words, etc. On seeing the student's involvement parents joined their hands.

Creative writers group activities

1. Songs: Collection of songs from various training like British Council, CELT, SCERT, DIET, BRC, and CRC

2. Tongue twisters: The little giant book of tongue twisters -Joseph Rosenbloom Mike Artell (my playlist )

3. Handwriting: My YouTube link

4.Phonic drill: -The songs the letters sing book 1 by SND  Margaret W Torrent and also I shared my YouTube videos

5. Creative writing: Atopic a day

6. Basic structural words dictation: to construct the sentences on their own

7.Sound-based dictation: from Jolly phonetics

Pushpa teacher YouTube channel

Online Educational Radio (Online Kalvi Radio)

Language Bridge Course

1.1.NewsReaders Group: Songs

Children are fond of songs, I shared a song regularly which I had contributed to online educational radio. The students could listen to them multiple times whenever they could find the time.

1.2.Newsreaders group: Tongue Twisters

I shared the recorded audio of tongue twisters for practicing. My children listen to those and send their recorded audio to the group after writing in their notebooks.

 1.3.Newsreaders group: Phonic drill

I shared 23 lessons on phonic drills through YouTube videos, which they watched and shared.

2.Online class group: Handwriting

I gave handwriting practice by sharing my YouTube link and also a handwritten copy of it in the group to follow easily.

3.Individual Message: Sound-based dictation words

Every day I uttered sounds which they listened to in the WhatsApp group. Later they typed the words and send them to me privately.

4.Creative Writers group:

I carefully monitored their various activities in their respective groups and did corrections in time.

 *In the creative writer's group, I assigned various topics regularly to write on their own. For 45 days I provided the topics like my father, my siblings, my grandparents, my pet animal, my locality, my aunt and uncle, my school, my class teacher, my first standard teacher, my favorite subject, a library book, my ambition, my experiences in lockdown academic year, unforgettable event in my life, etc.

 *I persuaded them to write about any picture from their textbook.

 *I conducted alphabetical games and prepared them to write the name of schoolmates by adding an eatable that originates with their first letter.

* I coached them to write three words for each alphabet that begins and ends with the same letter.

 *I directed them to write double-letter words for each alphabet.

 *I conducted vocabulary games like identify 50 objects from your home, execute 50 things from your school, pick up 25 rhyming words from poems,  examine the rhyming words from songs, etc. 

*At last, I had inspired them to write a short poem on their own.

*I  engaged students to frame their sentences for the basic structural words.

 *I encouraged them to write on a new topic every day.

 Day by day our student's involvement increased exponentially. Over time they had gained the confidence to write creative stories and as a bonus parents started spending more quality time with them.

The problems faced by our students

Out of 17 students, only 9 students attended the WhatsApp classes without failing and completed the tasks up-to-date.

5 students attended classes regularly but they had some issues with very sparse submission.

Others faced problems like

* No smartphones

* Unable to recharge 

*Network issues 

*Lack of parental cooperation

* Fear of misuse of the phone in the absence of parents.

Some steps to overcome these difficulties 

* for the students without a smartphone I called them through normal calls on every weekend and send messages to do certain activities by utilizing textbooks and Kalvi TV of our Tamilnadu Government.

 *Day by day number of WhatsApp users increased.

*I recharged for internet connection for the needy students.

* For the students with poor internet connectivity I asked them to connect via the online Kalvi Radio website which works even in 2G.

* I requested the parents to share their mobile phones between 7 to 8 both in the morning and in the evening to know and upload the task for the day.

 * Students' activities were appreciated in various groups. This made the rest of the students actively participate in the online learning process.

Young Creative Writers of P. U.M.S. Gurrency,  Coonoor, The Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu.

C.S.Darsani and A.Sanjana Oraon

 are the two young creative writers who emerged from our school because they finished all the assigned work and started to expand their horizons.

 Now they have become capable to write stories on their own using emojis.

 They wrote stories on the titles:-  The Golden Fish, The foolish cat, Darshan of Shiva, The wild elephant, The poor boy became a rich boy, The girl and the Tsunami, The man and the officers, The virus, Diwali of the poor man, the poor old man, and a boy, etc. 

 Their parents encouraged them to participate in the online kalvi radio competitions too.

 They contributed 100   proverbs and 100 tongue twisters in online Kalvi radio and won multiple certificates, and medals.

Salient features of creative writing

*Creative writing develops innovative and critical thinking 

*Continuous and consistent writing results in children having tremendous fun while doing something they enjoy.

* It improves their cognitive and emotional skills.

* In a world where communication predominantly happens via text messages and emojis are so common, creative writing helps to develop writing skills that are being forgotten about.

Uninterrupted teaching-learning during the pandemic

We expect all students to become creative writers. Pandemic is a situation to be isolated from school, not from educational activities. If we contact them via WhatsApp classes regularly with the support of parents all the students will become active and be the best citizens of tomorrow.

 Thank you

https://youtube.com/channel/UCPhUcUEb_Wl9fVqD4oJ1Elg

https://kalviradio.blogspot.com/p/tr-d-pushpa.html

Learning begins with listening!

Keep Listening! Keep on learning!