significance of education in enhancing life skills

ABHCG

Life Skills Approach to Teaching
Training Module for Primary School Teachers
National Commission for Human Development

Life Skills Approach to Teaching

CONTENTS
1.

Introduction

2.

Training Session Plans

3.

Quality Education – Definition and components

4.

Life Skills- Communication skills

5.

Life Skills- Information Gathering Skills

6.

Life Skills- Critical Thinking

7.

Life Skills- Creativity

8.

Life Skills- Empathy

9.

Teaching Techniques- Multiple Intelligences

10.

Other Teaching Techniques

11.

Student Assessment- Blooms Taxonomy

12.

Learning Disabilities

13.

Principles/Steps for Lesson Planning

14.

Preparing Lesson Plans

15.

Social Studies lesson planning

16.

Children’s Assessment using blooms Taxonomy

17.

Learning Disabilities

18.

Preparation for next phase of training

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Life Skills Approach to Teaching

INTRODUCTION
Everywhere, education is seen as the main way of enabling individuals and nations alike to meet the ever increasing economic, technological, social and personal challenges. We expect education to prepare young people for the world of work and for economic independence; to enable them to live constructively in responsible communities; and to enable them to live in a tolerant, culturally diverse and rapidly changing society. Perhaps above all, we expect education to help young people to build lives that have meaning and purpose in a future we can scarcely predict.
This has lead to re-organizing of the education systems all over the world so that they provide not only high standards of academic qualifications, including literacy and innumeracy but also inculcate skills such as creativity, communication, empathy, adaptability, and social skills, all of which are being increasingly emphasized by employers and others in the global society. More so, in this age of information explosion education systems face the ever increasing challenge of providing skills to acquire and process information as it is neither possible to provide children with all the information available, nor is it possible to predict what knowledge would be required 20 years from now, hence the focus on skills.
The system of education in Pakistan is largely confined to the coverage of the prescribed syllabi the contents of which are mostly knowledge based, and thus provide only the basic level of education, advocating rote learning. This type of learning may at best result in acquiring knowledge of facts and concepts, but is not directly related to the immediate life of the learners or to their future needs. Therefore, there is a concern that the precious years of schooling should be optimally used for developing skills, attitudes and values essential for effective living and working.
It is envisaged that in the changed educational process in terms of the concerns mentioned above, the learning, while continuing around the traditional school subjects, namely, language(s), mathematics, science, social sciences, art and aesthetics, work experience, health and physical education, should move beyond mere acquisition of knowledge of concepts and facts of these subjects. Though the textbooks may continue to remain the principal source of teaching-learning, the activities the methodology incorporated in the chapters should be skill oriented as opposed to provision of knowledge only.
This paradigm shift in the school education will mean that teacher will take care that learning of children is not limited to mere memorization of information contained in the textbooks, thus requiring a changed approach to the preparation of teachers.

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Life Skills Approach to Teaching

Most of the Schools are adopting this changed approach to develop a program for continuous professional development of teachers. In this regard technical support is being provided by the National Commission for Human Development, the first organization to take up the initiative of designing and introducing Life Skills based teacher training program on a large scale in Pakistan. As a first step a training module has been designed for the initial orientation and preparation of the primary school teachers with the immediate aim of introducing life skills based teaching methodology and training in preparing teaching material in the form of lesson plans using this approach.

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Life Skills Approach to Teaching

Day One
Session Plans
Training of ABHCG Teacher Trainers
Session No: 1

Session Title: Introduction and objectives

Timing: 0830-09:00

Duration:

30 minutes

Responsible: Resource Person/Master Trainer
_______________________________________________________________________
_
Session Objectives:






To introduce facilitators to participants and participants to one another
To share the introduction to the training
To share objectives of the training workshop
To share training methodology
Outline of schedule

By the end of the session the participants will be familiar with the:






facilitators and each other training introduction the training schedule the objectives of training the training methodology

Materials required: -Introduction
-Training Objectives
-Training Methodology
-Outline of training schedule
_______________________________________________________________________
_
Process

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Life Skills Approach to Teaching

1. Begin in the name of Allah
2. Resource persons introduce themselves
3. Name, designation, office
4. Introduction of participants
5. Name, designation, school
6. Share the contents of the introduction (from training manual)
7. Share Objectives of training
8. Share the training methodology
9. Share training schedule
10. Questions and answers
11. End of session
_______________________________________________________________________
_
Session No: 2

Session Title: Quality education- Definition &
Components

Timing: 09:00-0930

Duration:

30 minutes

Responsible: Resource Person/Master Trainer
_______________________________________________________________________
_
Objectives:




To introduce the definition and components of quality education (life skills, social norms, literacy skills)
To introduce the definition of social norms
To introduce the definition of life skills

By the end of the session the participants will be able to:

Provide definitions and components of quality education (life skills, social norms, literacy skills)
Materials required: Training manual section - Definition of Quality education
- Components of Quality Education
_______________________________________________________________________
_
Process

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Life Skills Approach to Teaching

1. From the training manual section “definition of quality education” asks the participants for their definition of quality education and then shares the different definitions of quality education as given in this section.
2. Using the diagram and explanatory notes given on “components of quality education”, explain these, life skills (including sub skills), social norms, literacy skills, knowledge. While explaining include definition and examples.
3. Ask participants if they can summarize the session giving your own inputs in case of gaps
4. Answer any questions the participants may have
5. Close the session
_______________________________________________________________________
_
Session No: 3
Timing: 09:: 30-10:05

Session Title: Life skills - Communication
Duration:

35 minutes

Responsible: Resource Person/Master Trainer
_______________________________________________________________________
_
Objectives:




To introduce ways through which we communicate
To emphasize the importance of effective communication as a skill
To outline techniques for enhancing children’s verbal and non verbal
Communication skills

By the end of the session the participants will be able to:




Highlight the ways through which we communicate
Highlight the importance of effective communication
Outline and use techniques for enhancing children’s verbal and non verbal
Communication skills

Materials required: Training manual section – Communication
_______________________________________________________________________
_

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Life Skills Approach to Teaching

Process
1. The participants individually read the material on communication and then discuss it in groups, focusing their discussion around the following questions:

In what ways do we communicate?

Why is it important to be effective communicators?

What techniques can we use to enhance the way we communicate verbally, and nonverbally? 2. How effective are you at communicating, how do you say this, give examples from you experience? (Make notes of these examples for sharing during discussion)
3. Make notes of points where further clarification is required during discussion.
4. Once the group discussion invite the participants for a whole class discussion to discuss the above questions.
5. Ask the participants to look at this picture and tell what does it tell us about this speaker, supporting it with the clues from the picture, e.g. if they say the speaker is not confident then how did they judge that

6. Listening Skills Exercise – divide the participants into groups and ask them to do the following listening exercise
Person 1. Start talking about any subject for 4 or 5 sentences
Person 2. When the first person stops talking, repeat back to them what you thought you heard, starting with phrases like:

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Life Skills Approach to Teaching

I want to be sure I understand what you are saying. It sounds like . . .
Is part of what you are saying . . . ?
What I hear you saying, if I understand you correctly is . . .
I want to make sure I am hearing what you are saying . . .
What I heard was . . .