TESS-India : OER Content Creation - Experience of a collaborative effort Hosted by Dr Mythili Ramchand and Kimberly Safford

1. Teacher Education
through School-based
Support in India
OER Content Creation
Experience of a collaborative effort
Hosted by Dr Mythili Ramchand and
Kimberly Safford

2. People involved for EE Content
Development
• Initial consultation with a large group
• Content creation by a team of three Indians (which
included a linguist, a pedagogue and a researcher)
ably guided by the leader from Open University, UK.
Additional assistance rendered by two school
teachers.

3. The Brief
• Refer to National policy documents – NCF, 2005;
NCFTE, 2009 for pedagogic principles
• Relate to the context of classrooms in a Government
school
- Plan for supporting marginalized groups;
managing multi-grade classes and large classes
• Provide opportunities for teacher to practice English

4. The requirement
• Fifteen units; each unit to include:
- Ideas for activities
- Vignettes from actual classrooms
- Suggestions for CCE
- Resources
• To be written in an open, conversational style
addressed to a classroom teacher

5. The objectives
• To develop teachers’ English proficiency
• To promote interactive pedagogy
• To use the language textbook and other available
resources creatively and flexibly
• To disseminate good practice

6. Themes Identified
• Classroom routines
• Using the textbooks
• Songs, rhymes and word play
• Learning English in the creative
arts
• English and subject content
integration
• Community resources for English
• Letters and Sounds of English
• Story telling
• Shared reading
• Planning around a text
• Developing and monitoring
reading
• Promoting the reading
environment
• The input rich environment
• Mark making and early
writing
• Developing and monitoring
writing

7. Process
• Developed a framework.
• Collectively discussed, shared ideas and evolved one
prototype unit each, for which extensive feedback was
given.
• Each author chose 5 units to write independently.
• Iterations based on feedback from team leader and
critical readers.
• Tight language editing and ensuring parity in styles across
units by team leader.

8. Sample from a Unit
Unit: Classroom routines
Record yourself in the classroom
• This is an activity for you.
• Take your mobile phone into your classroom and record the
first ten minutes of a lesson.
• Listen back to what you recorded two or three times and
answer these questions:
• How much English did you speak? What words or phrases did
you use? Did you switch to Hindi or a local language? When
did you do this, and why?
• Can you now think of words and sentences in English that
would say the same things? Write these down.

9. Unit: Shared Reading
Case Study : Miss Samreen is a Class 3 teacher in Bihar.
First I prepared a big book of a story I had narrated
before. I grouped the students around me. I explained
we would be reading a book together. The students
were new to shared reading, I focused mainly on the
progression of the story and its characters. Before
starting to read I pointed to a character or picture,
asking them ‘Who is she?’, ‘What is that?’ or ‘What is
he doing?’, and the students responded .

11. What the units hope to do
• Suggest ideas for readings and activities to teach and
learn English in environments where the language is
sparsely used.
• Provide pointers for practicing teachers, teacher
educators and prospective teachers to:
- manage classrooms, including large classes,
multi grade, multilevel classrooms;
- take up formative assessments;
- use a variety of resources to cater to diverse
learning needs.

13. How the units are meant to be
used
• Embed them within the texts that teachers use
• Adapt and tailor them to meet the individual needs
of a teacher and her students
• For a prospective, practicing teacher to strengthen
his/her English language

15. Developmental Testing
• 2 localized units tested in 5 rural, Government
schools in MP by a researcher representing OU, UK
and an Indian author. It involved:
• Observing teachers’ classes based on self reading of
a unit
• Briefly orienting teachers to the second unit and
then observing their classes
• Interviewing concerned teachers, children, head
teachers and teacher educators of DIET

16. Developmental Testing
Learning:
• Activities found to be doable.
• Brief orientation helped.
• Sections that addressed strengthening of teachers’
own language appreciated.

17. Filming
Purpose: Modelling some of the activities/suggestions
for classroom organization and management/strategies
for assessment using authentic classrooms, to
supplement the units.
Soon to be made public.

18. Preparing EE OER content has been a focused,
systematic and academically rewarding exercise for
those of us involved with it.
We hope they are inviting and aspirational for teachers,
teacher educators and student teachers to adapt them
to suit their classroom requirements.

19. To look at the content developed
please visit TESS India site
http://www.tess-india.edu.in/learning-materials/english