Understanding Activities in Learning

The terms ‘joyful learning’, ‘teaching learning material’, ‘child-centred learning’, and ‘active classrooms’ are now common parlance in educational discourse. Teachers, especially, are expected to be not just familiar with these terms but also have classrooms that reflect these ideas or materials. The use of activities in classrooms is promoted as an initiative that will lead towards a more participatory classroom. Activities are seen as a means of engaging children, simplifying concepts, making subjects and learning enjoyable, creating attractive classrooms, giving children the opportunities to practise, and even improving children’s academic performance. However, most often, an understanding of what constitutes a good activity and how activities influence children’s learning is missing ( Dewan n.d. ). Teachers struggle with new activities, their design as well as implementation, which are passed onto them in various teacher-training programmes. It is not surprising, then, that most teachers quickly give up and revert to traditional teaching methods that appear familiar and easy.