Mother Tongue-based Literacy Programmes: Case Studies of Good ...

Graded PrimersAt present, ARP has prepared graded materials for classes I, II and III, which includes Literacy, Arithmetic,Social Studies, Physical Science and English. The project has touched a total of 307 children.Teacher’s GuideThe Teacher’s Guide is an important tool for the teachers to give effective lessons to the students. Afterits completion, the ARP offered training so that teachers would know how best to use the Guide forconducting effective learning sessions.Supplementary Reading MaterialsIn addition to the prescribed primers/texts, supplementary reading materials are very helpful inreinforcing and broadening children’s knowledge. So ARP took the initiative to prepare supplementaryreading materials for classes I, II & III. The preparation of these materials has been described earlier inthis report.Collection of Lexicons and Development of Word BookGlobally, the languages of ethnic minorities having no written script are endangered from extinction.Due to the influence of national languages, which are often required for life and livelihood purposes,ethnic minorities are being forced into a condition of abandoning their own languages in favor of themore widely spoken national languages. As a result, words and or vocabulary in mother tongue isgradually forgotten and becomes extinct. Indeed, many Oraon people have already lost many wordsbecause they’ve replaced them with Bangla in their conversations. Realizing this, the ARP research teambegan collecting Sadri words from various Oraon communities in northwest Bangladesh. Currently, 906words have been collected and verified. This is a notable achievement for the ARP, and it may serve thepurpose of making a dictionary and grammar book for Sadri in the near future.IPA TransformationThe stock of words gives an idea of a language’s range of vocabulary. As noted above, the ARP hasdeveloped the Sadri word book, and continuous effort will be given to enrich it. With this in mind, theresearch team has transformed those collected words into an International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)version.Support for MLEASHRAI not only has successfully mobilized the community, implemented action research and developedcurriculum and graded materials in Sadri, it has also quite successfully motivated different donors like,SDC, NOVIB and NETZ to come forward and extend support for mother tongue-based education tothe children. At present, SDC is providing support for five schools, NOVIB for two and NETZ for threeschools. It is expected that NETZ will support more schools in the next year.[ 47 ]