How primary pupils authored their own story book ; The essence of project-based teaching and learning

As is often said, whatever can be imagined can be achieved. From experience, Albert Einstein was to the point when he asserted that, “Imagination is more important than knowledge”.

That message is most compelling in instilling in the youth and their teachers the great possibilities ahead of them; especially the confidence one earns from hands-on productive achievements. 

I was recently on a television (TV) discussion programme about elevating standards in education in Ghana where a vigorous teacher’s representative on the panel deplored how teaching was so difficult in the country when one could not even be provided with teaching and learning materials to work with. The rep carried on about his first degree and his Master’s or M.Phil degrees and now felt abandoned by the system, or left to his own devices.

Response

My response was that (in the crunch time where teaching and learning materials are not readily available, or in scant supply) with a first degree or even a diploma in education, teachers must be able to produce their own materials in their chosen subjects. The real fun and professional growth of any teacher – from the primary to the university levels - is in this arena of being self-sufficient in one’s own right. And students’ involvement can be assets in this. It gives the youth a sense of purpose when they participate, indicating that they are valued as thinkers and doers.

I recall doing an in-service training in a basic school near Accra with English Language teachers where I went from class to class - from primary to Junior High School (JHS) - to help teachers with instructional strategies. The focus was on teaching the mechanics of the English Language entailing subject / verb agreements, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, punctuations, and so on. 

After a particular break, the pupils from an upper primary class I was about to visit came and asked excitedly, “Sir, what are we going to do today?” On the spur of the moment, I had to sustain their interests and not put a damper on their excitement with some dull abstractions like grammar. So I said swiftly, “We are going to work on a book project; we’re going to write and publish our very own book.” They were quiet; no doubt thinking what that lofty expectation was all about. But a new day was right around the corner, about to dawn on them, about to make some of them - for the first time in their lives - bona fide published writers.

Pupils’ own book

So it started benignly. Each pupil was tasked to write a story from anything they had been told by parents, friends, siblings or a movie they had seen, or even a dream they had had. The process started slowly: In a class of about 30 youngsters, not everybody can write a story or even remember one. But attempts were made. 

For a closure, the next day or so, I selected the best stories to be read by the writers themselves to the class, for the pupils to get a feel of what made good stories good. The next assignment was for them to take their stories back, critique them in groups, and do second drafts to make them better after those initial writing, reading and listening experiences. 

This went on for about a week. In the end, I selected the better stories and edited them, careful to maintain the students’ own words and ideas, but arranging and re-arranging the syntax for clarity. In the end, we got many good stories. The following paragraphs are from a story titled “Friends indeed”:

Story

“As the hunter approached them with his gun ready to shoot, the Hawk distracted him by shouting, ‘Haa! Haa! Hunter, what are you coming to do to my friends?’ The Hunter turned around to see who was shouting at him. He found no one, and turned his attention back to the Antelope and the Rabbit. But they had used that very instant to disappear, and could not be found.

“They all escaped the hunter’s trap and gun. Safe now at the compound, they invited their friends, and together they sang and danced, and praised God for their lives.”

Another story, titled “The magic pot” began like this: “Long ago there lived a woman. She sold the best soup in the market. It was chicken soup. Nobody knew the woman’s name or where she lived. Nobody knew why her soup was the best in the market, or why it was so tasty and hot. But people did not worry about that. They bought the soup because it was delicious and hot. They ate the soup hungrily.”

Book illustration

Particular scenes from each of the stories selected for the book project were drawn, in a collaborative or interdisciplinary manner in their art class by other students artistically inclined in a team effort, and were used as illustrations in the book. The art that was chosen for the cover design was from a story titled, “The stone with a beard”.

From the children’s own work, it now became much easier for them to relate to the grammar aspects related to the initial objectives of the mechanics of language: in terms of the nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, punctuations and the rest. 

The key idea in project-based teaching and learning is that teachers don’t always have to be the students’ primary sources of information or materials for learning. Teacher training colleges and universities must help teachers become designers of learning objectives, where they act as facilitators creating the conditions where the learners themselves sit in the driver’s seat adding value to their own ideas, interests and passions. 

[Email: anishaffar@gmail.com]