Advantages of ABL

Let us see the advantages of learning through activities.

1. All of us, particularly children, learn best when they employ their various sensory capabilities in an integrated way. These are their capabilities of listening, speaking, observing, tasting, smelling and coordination of various parts of their body. Listening to a teacher employs only one of these and the other senses, like looking out of the window & rocking the chair, start interrupting the listening and disrupt their focus. But an activity employs several of these senses in a natural and integrated way. ABL encourages multi-sensory experiences. It is in tune with the way we naturally learn through the environment & experiences.

2. Young children have a natural tendency to move physically. In a conventional classroom, they are confined for long hours to a table & chair and hence become fidgety. While participating in activities, a child has an opportunity to move around as a natural part of the learning process.

3. In a ‘standard’ class the teacher “talks” and the children mostly (and hopefully) listen. For young children, listening & understanding the spoken language of a teacher (with varying vocabulary, syntax & pronunciations) is an abstract skill. Hence the attention span of children is not more than 10 minutes at a time. In activities, the talking of teachers is confined to giving the instructions & interjecting occasionally as the activity progresses.

4. In the conventional approach, teacher writes the problems on the board and students solve it by writing in their notebooks. Since they have not yet mastered the art of writing, each student can do at the most 3 or 4 problems during a class. The major portion of the time goes in writing down the problems and then the solutions. Writing is also unavoidably accompanied by, time wasting activities like, sharpening of pencils and using the eraser. The time spent in “thinking about the problems” is much less. Math which is a conceptual subject needs more thinking time of students.

5. Further when a teacher writes on the board, she is not facing the class and chances of disruption of the learning environment are higher.

6. Activities also give students an opportunity to interact with their peers which in itself is enjoyable and intrinsically motivating.

7. Interaction with peers is also a good learning strategy. In a well-designed activity students get to practice of not only thinking about the problem and the solution which they have in their hands, but also a chance to see solutions of many other students & even interact with the peers.

8. Accepting your mistake from peers, rather than from teachers, is also an emotionally easier process for children.

9. Seeing mistakes made by self or by others, also reinforces understanding of the correct concept.

10. An activity also presents several alternate solutions out of which the correct one should be selected. When a child is looking for number “five”, it sees many numbers which are “not five” and rejects them. This is deeper learning for the child.

11. In the traditional approach, a teacher, to check the level of learning, has to either talk individually to a child or go through his/her notebook. This takes a lot of teaching time of the teacher. Through activities, a teacher can note the strengths & weaknesses of a child by just observing them. The teacher can easily identify students who have not yet understood the concept. She can then give a one-on-one explanation to the student. The teacher is saved the drudgery of correcting all the student work. This gives her more time to think, discuss and plan.

12. A teacher can also improvise her activities to suit the needs of specific children. If a child has a difficulty with a specific concept, she can ensure during an activity that the particular child is given more activities involving that concept. In a limited sense, children can learn at their own pace under the guidance of the teacher.

13. The same activity can be repeated over the year, thus revising and reinforcing learning. As sessions proceed, the time taken to conduct the sessions would also reduce. The teacher can vary the difficulty of the experience and “deepen and broaden” the learning by just changing the numbers involved in the activity

14. Working on the same set of problems may give rise to a temptation for some students to copy the solution from their neighbours and hence hide their lack of learning. It may take a long time for the teacher to identify such non-learning.

15. Students learn the discipline to participate in activities with minimum disruption and maximum focus on learning.

16. They also learn leadership and teamwork skills by conducting such activities.

17. Hence the percentage of students who understand the concept would be higher than in a conventional class.

To ensure that all children can learn, the activity should be well thought out and moderately challenging. If it is too difficult for the students, they may lose the motivation.

Writing

Children also need practice writing the problems & the solutions to enhance their learning. This is also needed for parents to understand what has been done in school and get a feel of their learning. They also need to learn additional mathematical symbols (like +, < etc) for this. This can be done in later classes, after making sure of their understanding of the concepts though activities.