Education is just like the game of chess. Why chess? Why not basketball or football? Yes, these games may have common grounds to be understood before the players play, however, in chess, only one player plays and wins. One has to learn at least the names, arrangements and the different moves of the pieces more has an idea on how to give and get out of check. Basically, this is what I do in Tutorial Room 1 (TR1) with the children I am handling.
I don’t teach them chess literally because I know they’re good in playing it. As a facilitator, I just want them to realize that as they move their pieces they must already know the proper arrangements and the names of each member of the board game. Just like in education, the children can not read and blend words like cat, dog, goat or rainbow without knowing the letters and sounds of the alphabets or even find the value of X-Y without mastering the basic mathematical operations. I am handling children from Level 1 to Level 4 and some of them lack these abilities especially the one’s enrolled in the higher levels. There are some instances that the topics hardly penetrate their minds.
Being the initiator of these kids, I have to find other ways and techniques to help them dig in to their minds the concepts and applications of our topics. Sometimes, we need to do our lessons on the floor to make them comfortable and combine play activities to lessen their boredom. I have to involve their talents as well since most of them are very talented and artistic. They draw, color, cut and paste figures or pictures and even compose a poem or a song basing from the pictures that they like. They can create their own melody through the use of a guitar or can adopt the tune from their favorite songs. The children like challenges and do well if they understand the lesson. This motivates me to do our evaluation through a contest by giving them numbers to solve. We also do story telling through the use of puppets and power point presentation to make our session interesting instead of just merely reading the story book. Most often than not, we also sit or lie on the matted floor while watching movies related to our curriculum. It helps them think critically and teaches them to value life.
These are just among the things that I and my students do in TR1. I don’t want them to chase the rainbow but just like in chess, the player must plan first before executing a good move. It’s up to him to think and weigh before he do a checkmate. So come, let’s play chess in TR1. :)
*february 2007 nung dumalaw mga sponsors*
