Thursday, September 09, 2010

An invitation to visit our website: www.joi2learn.com!



Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Book List

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Be a good parent tonight:

All you need to do is to tell your child a riveting bedtime story!

First, we suggest you make a mask or two and play charade;

Teach a few new words in passing to improve the vocabulary;

En route, check the pronunciation and spelling;

And the parts of speech, if he or she is ready.

Initiate your child into drawing and colouring;

A bit of GK wouldn’t do any harm;

While at it, you might as well teach a rhyme!

Give it a once over to see that the child has understood the story.

And before you tuck your child into bed and say, ‘Good night!’

a friendly game of quiz or crossword puzzle may be in order.

All within the covers of a new series of storybooks,
in a smashing new format!

Learner’s Choice
Activity-oriented Storybooks

Look up the availability of titles, both hard and soft copies, at our website, www.joi2learn.com today!

Monday, September 06, 2010

Story telling as an integral part of primary education

What is story telling? Is it just reading a storybook or narrating an episode or just a waste of time?

No, it is much more than all that. Story telling plays a major role in primary education today. It helps to bring about the development of many skills to achieve the components of language development, which are speaking, writing and reading. These skills can be successfully developed with the help of story telling when conducted effectively.

At the infant level, stories can be part of a daily routine. At a later stage subjects like literature, history, geography and even mathematics require a very narrative teacher to bring out the best in children.

Listening, recognition, identification, comprehension, reading, writing, recall, drawing, conversation and dramatization are among the more important skills that can be developed through story telling. All these skills will finally lead to successful language development.

One must break the monotony of the so-called lecture method of teaching by introducing the story method. This can kindle the curiosity in children, entertain them, stimulate their imagination, appeal to their sense of adventure and arouse strong feelings and emotion. Thus children’s involvement in the learning process reaches its peak, enabling them to understand things better. Learning becomes more meaningful.

Read to the infants with expression; show them the pictures, daily. Use apt words by giving the meanings clearly and be very expressive. This will help develop their listening and observation skills that become vital as they grow. By doing so regularly, one is building up the reading interest in children and the ability to narrate stories effectively.

As they grow up, they will be able to tackle comprehension passages well, as they would have by then developed their understanding skills as well. Sentence construction becomes easy and writing of essays more challenging. Their imagination will run wild and essay and story writing will become more creative.

Observation of illustrations and pictures in the books will develop colour sense and the art of drawing. Drawing is an excellent way of expression and communication. It helps in the improvement of handwriting and brings about great satisfaction of achievement.

A good narrative teacher can help children speak accurately and eloquently. There will be clarity in the manner in which they speak as the stories are not narrated once but repeated.

Encourage story telling and motivate children to narrate, listen, read and write stories. The learning process becomes more innovative, interesting, worthwhile and fulfilling and helps to bring out the best in every child.

The ‘Companion Note’ for teachers and parents, accompanying all ‘Learner’s Choice’ activity-based storybooks, lends further credence to the concept of story telling by providing guidelines on simple ways of enacting the story, developing games and quiz programs – cumulatively helping in enriching the mind of the child while also making that process a most enjoyable experience.

These stories have been retold by an experienced School Teacher.

Sunday, September 05, 2010

‘Learner’s Choice’ storybooks are different…

  • Continuing the tradition of story telling from where Grandma left off…
  • Based on the modern integrated approach to learning
  • Helps in improving vocabulary, comprehension and expression
  • Strengthens reading, writing, drawing and colouring skills
  • Brilliantly illustrated
  • A play-way teaching aid to make the learning process most enjoyable.

Imagine a school teacher specializing in pre-school and primary education feeling continuously dissatisfied with most of the teaching aids found locally. There are, of course, innumerable story and picture books available for children. But they are invariably of the western genre or stereotyped products to pose any real challenge to those fertile young minds taking the first few tentative steps into the mainstream of education today. Probably, such material fail to inspire the teaching fraternity as well.

For example, consider an average illustrated storybook of Indian or foreign origin. Regardless of the quality of illustrations or presentation format, the story takes the standard route of narration. It is comparatively easy on the parent or teacher who is telling the story to carry out the task. But education, by any stretch of imagination, cannot be considered so easy. Now, ask the all-important question, how far does a standard story-telling session help in educating a child? The truth may be, precious little. In fact, it is reflective of the general dilution in standard that is fast eroding the field of education, particularly at the preparatory and primary levels. Plenty of quantity, but very little regard for quality!

Saturday, September 04, 2010

Developing good handwriting as a vital communication tool.

Teacher's Corner

Prelude: Learning of drawing skills at an
impressionable age can accelerate the
development of fine motor skills and
control of the small muscles of the hands.
Such encouraging activities will allow
children to make the precise movements
necessary for forming letters and improve
hand-eye coordination, leading to good handwriting.

Good handwriting is a vital communication skill and developing that skill at an early age need no longer be viewed as a chore by teachers, parents and wards alike. It can be fun to begin and end with as being proved in practical terms through a set of 7 ‘Learner’s Choice’ series of titles. These exercise books, starting with pattern drawing at level A and ending with creative writing exercises for the average student at level V when the foundation learning is considered to be truly and effectively completed, have become the popular choice for prescribed use in all leading schools, including a number of well-known International schools in southern India.

Why view handwriting as a critical communication skill, you might ask? Look at any standard doctor’s prescription and you begin to wonder at the elasticity and tolerance levels of ‘legibility’ in handwriting! But ask any experienced primary school teacher and she will quickly endorse the common perception that many a time students lose out on marks not because they do not know the subject matter, but because they are unable to write legibly, making it bothersome for the evaluator to decipher as to what they have written.

The ‘o’ will often look like ‘a’, ‘u’ like ‘c’, ‘i’ like ‘e’ and vice versa. Instead, handwriting should look good, be legible and should facilitate quick writing. Handwriting is a skill and it needs to be developed from the very early age. Every letter has a related pattern and linking the letter of the alphabet is an art by itself.

The series of ‘Cursive Writing Made Easy’ titles from ‘Learner’s Choice’ provide an opportunity to the current generation of children, no matter what their age group may be, to learn or rectify their style of writing, to develop the art and skill of cursive writing, leading to legible writing and to rightfully secure the marks they deserve.

This handwriting set, from level A to V, is priced at Rs.50/- per title. For further details and preview, visit, www.joi2learn.com or write to: joi2learn@gmail.com.