Capability Focused Learning— The Secret Key To A Successful Class

We can make learning limitless when we focus on developing capabilities that help us observe, absorb and apply the knowledge around us. In a classroom, when a teacher uses a capability focused learning approach, her attention goes towards creating opportunities where students will get to build different capabilities, and not only remember information. For instance, a unit on the family can be about learning names of family members or rather can be an opportunity to develop capabilities of expression, reading, and sharing. Let us peep into a second-grade classroom of Khekra Primary School №4 to know how this can happen…

While planning how to teach the concept of family, the teacher had already decided and written down the learning outcomes that she wanted to focus on through this session. This made learning smoother and effective.

For the teacher here, the topic in hand was “Family” and the learning outcomes were multiple.

Firstly, she wanted the students to talk about their families to encourage the students to share and work on their capability to express themselves. Since this was an easy topic at hand, she also decided to use this class to build their confidence by allowing the students to speak in front of the class. Lastly, she also wanted to develop their reading skills by learning to identify sounds in a word. Through the names of family members, children would learn the different sounds that every letter makes.

Executing the learning outcomes

With these three pre-decided learning outcomes, the class began. First, the teacher spoke about her own family. Her intention was to create an open space of sharing. Then she started asking the students about their family. Once the students were a little more comfortable about talking about their homes, the teacher divided the whole class into groups.

Once the groups were formed, the students were asked to draw a sketch of their families on a drawing paper along with their names. As soon as the teacher announced this, all the students become nervous, some nervous as they didn’t know how to draw. But once the teacher drew a simple stick sketch of her own family on the board, the students became more receptive to the task at hand and began drawing freely.

When Students Express And Learn!

The activity thus began.

The students started drawing all the members of their family and then writing each one’s names. This itself was so much fun to watch for all of us. Little children drawing their families so lovingly on a piece of paper. Some students also came to us to ask for assistance in writing names of their family members. They were able to catch sounds in the words and reflect on how the complete word could be written.

The students even chose the language in which they wished to write the names of their family members in the drawing. Some wrote it in English and others mixed Hindi and English.

In this way, the teacher was able to establish all three learning outcomes- building confidence, building their expression skills, and tap into their reading skills at the same time!

Success Story — One Arrow, Three Birds

After this activity, the teacher displayed their collaborative learning in front of the whole classroom. The students not only learned more about their own family but also about how their friends’ families looked like.

The teacher was very excited that this first step towards recognizing sounds and words, could lead her students towards reading sentences next, and an entire book someday!

Such well-executed classes affirm how defining the learning outcomes in the planning stage can help not only the teacher but also the students to grow! We, at Tarkeybein, are always on the lookout of these small stories that have the power to ripple into wonderful possibilities. Do you have such stories that you have observed in your school? Share with us!

If you resonate with our work, want to implement this model in your community, want to support this initiative, or just want to drop in some encouraging words, we invite you to write to us at tarkeybein@gmail.com :)