Bilingual dictionary for grades I-V & VI -VIII released

Bengaluru: Bal Raksha Bharat and DSERT-Karnataka has designed a curriculum based bi-lingual dic-tionary for grades I-V and VI -VIII to address the bilingual & multi-lingual challenges in government schools. This will help all young children to improve their language effi-ciency from primary to elementary level to cope-up with learning challenges in multi lingual situations.

Karnataka or any other metropolitan cities are filled with lakhs of migrant families from different states and languages who are depended on government schools. They are facing lot of challenges in understanding the local language, coping up with medi-um of instructions in regional language or even in English language where teachers are also unable to cater to quality teaching and learning for all the children from diverse backgrounds.

In this situation, language dictionary will play an important role in providing more meaningful tool to learn and understand new words even in mother tongue and Eng-lish language where states have already declared as English medium schools by provid-ing bi-lingual textbooks. In this situation, children may not afford to buy or refer dic-tionaries to learn new words and its comprehension. In this scenario, realized the im-portance of curriculum-based dictionary to give a simple solution to learn key and critical words for strengthening student learning.

The two dictionaries have considered all the subjects including languages (Kannada and English), Mathematics, and Environment Science for primary level and Languages, social studies, science and mathematics and Hindi subjects for higher grades. Subject experts from SCERT and Subject Teachers have been worked almost 2 years to refer various models of dictionaries, adding a child centric pedagogical method, identifying the critical words from all the subjects and designed a curriculum based with relevant illustrations and and pictorial bi-lingual dictionary in Kannada and English.

This dictionary is one of the unique pieces for catering age group of 6-14 years to learn key words, its pronunciation, comprehension and its usage in sentences in both kannada and also in English. This dictionary helps in avoiding the hassle of using sepa-rate subject specific dictionaries for different subjects. Initially, this model of experi-ence have taken from Andhra Pradesh where the government has prepared for primary schools for grades I-V for age groups of 6-10 years where DSERT Karnataka has been considered the age groups of 6-14 with grades I-V & VI-VIII. There are around 50 Sub-ject teachers and DSERT faculty have worked almost two years to design a very com-prehensive dictionary for supporting children from most marginalized and children from diverse backgrounds.

The formal launch was held on Tuesday at DSERT Conference Hall, Bengaluru. Gopala Krishna, Director, DSERT delivered the keynote address on the importance of diction-ary and its journey with way forward actions to take forward the dictionary for all the children in Karnataka after the pilot is done in proposed 100 Government Schools for this academic year.

B Srinivasa Rao, IAS., State Project Director, Samagra Shikhana, Andhra Pradesh has joined the programme virtually and appreciated DSERT Team for designing this unique piece of dictionary and explained about AP experience in inventing the idea of bi-lingual dictionary during 2018.

Avinash Singh, Director, Programmes has emphasized that, simple solutions for the children always give a major outcome. He also appreci-ated DSERT team for their significant efforts for making this possible.

Deputy Director, Joint Directors and Department Heads from DSERT were present in the programme. N.M. Chandra Sekara, Head, South PIU, Malladi Sree Nagesh, Tech-nical Advisor, Education, K.Vijayamma, Project Lead and other team members from Bal Raksha Bharat attended the programme. Radha, Senior Assistant Director, Public Instructions, DSERT anchored the programme.

DSERT has mentioned about the way forward to make access this dictionary for all the children in the State once the pilot phase is completed by end of March 2024. Also, Samagra Shikshana, Karnataka is already made a road map to adopt this dictionary in around 400 Primary Schools under PMSHRI programme as part of their quality initia-tives under education.