The COVID pandemic made it difficult for children with disabilities, especially children living in rural
areas and / from economically disadvantaged backgrounds to access education. SERPA subscribers
realized that this may create a setback for the students once regular school begins. So as to reduce
this setback, SERPA held a brainstorming session with around 65 plus professionals in May 2020 and
drew an outline for “SERPA Remote Classroom”
SERPA remote classroom was primarily envisioned to allow free access to education by creating
booklets. These booklets in both vernacular (Kannada, Hindi & Tamil) and English, essentially
contained worksheets, which covered various skill sets that are foundational for learning. The areas
that were included were as follows:
- Life skills
- Perception {Visual/ Auditory}
- Psychomotor skills {Gross motor/ Fine motor}
- Speech and Language skills
- Cognitive Abilities
- Functional skills -English Reading
- Academics Numeracy
- Listening Comprehension
A team of dedicated professionals from SERPA meticulously created these worksheets for ages 5 to 8
years. These worksheets were created fundamentally with the idea of a “Universal Design” so that
all children can utilize. {Children with learning challenges and neurotypical as well.}
Volunteers from Smileys Foundation also pitched in to help with the translation of these worksheets.
In addition to the worksheets, SERPA also conducted online trainings for teachers/ facilitators/
caregivers in Karnataka (including Banglore, Koppal, Chamrajnagar, BD Tatti, Gadag, Mysore ) and
Tamilnadu (Coimbatore, Chennai). During these sessions, the participants were taken through the
various skill areas that are integral to the process of learning and the rationale of these worksheets
was explained as well. Finding the worksheets interesting and engaging, the teachers were
motivated to execute it with their students. A few teachers were able to work with the children,
before the pandemic hit us gain.
These worksheets are now being converted into interactive ones including audio files so that the
students can access them independently.
As a part of the outreach program, SERPA also conducted Awareness sessions on “Understanding
learning challenges in children”, for mainstream schoolteachers in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. All
these schools are facilitating learning for children from economically underprivileged backgrounds.