In this video, Joya Senchowa and Babita Hapila from India talk about the challenges of multi-class teaching, i.e. where more than one grade or age group are taught in one room with no partitions.
In Joya’s school, children from nursery age to Grade 5 are all taught in one hall and when the other teachers are absent, Joya handles all the groups alone! How can teachers manage learning and behaviour in such low-resource contexts? As Babita explains, there are times when different classes can come together, for example during warm-up activities. At other times, each class can be given a different task to work on, e.g. while one class is busy working on writing, the teacher can focus on the presentation of language with another class.
One resource these schools are not short of is students, and Babita suggests a number of ways in which higher-level students can be helpful in monitoring, assisting and even teaching!
Reflection and discussion
One of the purposes of these resources is to help you with your own teacher development in related contexts. Try to discuss the following questions with colleagues.
- In your context, what do you need to consider when teaching multiple classes at one time?
- What should lesson plans look like when you teach multiple levels in one room?
- How can you divide lesson time fairly?
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The video was first published in 2016.