Transforming Education Through Foundational Literacy and Numeracy

Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) is a key component of the National Education Policy (NEP)-2020. Its aim is to ensure that each and every school achieves FLN by 2025. Its purpose is to ensure that all students, up to Grade 3, learn and acquire the required literacy and numeracy skills. 

Achieving FLN targets is of utmost importance in our schools, and to accomplish this goal, we are actively engaged in various activities that include the following:

• Online interactions with parents of students up to Grade 3 every month to update them on the progress of their ward.
• Guidance to parents on how they may help their ward prepare for FLN, create videos and other FLN materials.
• As a part of the foundation literacy video preparation process, students can speak A–Z read simple words or sentences or recite poetry in English or Hindi. For numeracy, students can read out numbers, and simple tables and solve easy questions based on easy mathematical operations. 
• Once done, students can upload their videos to their class Whatsapp group. The teachers would then review each video carefully to identify any areas of development or gaps in the students’ FLN skills up to Grade 3. Based on these findings, teachers create a personalised remedial plan for each student with the goal of improving their FLN skills and achieving the FLN target. This process is repeated several times until each student achieves excellence in FLN. This practice provides a promising route for effectively supporting and achieving FLN goals in Grade 3.
• Teachers use TLM and play-based methods for teaching literacy and numeracy. Display of charts about numbers, tables, English alphabets, Hindi alphabets, fruits, vegetables and flowers names with pictures, body parts of humans, animals, rivers, maps of India and states, etc, adds to the student’s learning process. 
• School walls are painted with pictures and words that help students continuously learn new things through visual memory. Floors are also painted with numbers and pictures.
• Teachers teach and encourage reading and speaking practices in Grade 1 until the students can recognise and speak English and Hindi alphabets, words and numbers. In primary grades, we stress first reading, speaking and then writing. We focus on each and every student individually.
•  We monitor the progress of every student individually and make changes to our remedial plan accordingly and keep parents informed through monthly progress reports. 
• Regular teacher training sessions are held by the school to familiarise teachers with FLN and update them on different teaching techniques for students up to Grade 3. This helps teachers understand and creating FLN plans for students. Organising FLN workshops at the cluster level allows teachers to share best practices for improving teaching and assessment strategies to meet FLN targets.
• We also conduct online and offline painting, slogan writing and video-making competitions monthly for students up to Grade 3. Participating in these competitions not only boosts students’ performance but also actively engages them in learning, reading and writing. 

Authored by Vipin Kumar Tyagi, Principal, K V Baoli, Baghpath

Disclaimer: The views stated in this article are solely those of the author’s. They do not profess to reflect the opinions or views of BYJU’s or its members.