Foundational Literacy & Numeracy: A Practitioner's Perspective

Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) is a concept that focuses on the development of basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills in the New Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) of India. We can roughly define it as a child’s ability to comprehend simple texts and answer simple math problems like there is one thing in the 1 and nine in 9, adding and subtracting, etc.

As envisioned by The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) of India, the aim of FLN is to ensure that children learn in a joyful manner through play, stories, rhymes, activities, local art, craft, and music, and develop strong foundations for lifelong learning. The mission outlines and structures the learning outcomes in a spiral and progressive manner from Preschool to grade three aiming at holistic development and learning.

The objectives of FLN include making learners competent in doing meaningful reading and writing by the time they enter grade 3, developing the basic understanding and competencies related to numeracy and its related concepts among young learners up to Grade 2, and developing skills among the learners to amalgamate their outside school experiences in their classroom learning to attain foundational literacy and numeracy in a better way.

It’s important to note that these foundational skills are critical gateway skills that form the foundation for children — much as the terminology suggests — on which they will build their lives. Therefore FLN, we can say is for lifelong understanding. Schools should teach or develop FLN for enduring understanding. It feels right to point out that much that is important in life is the simplest and basic!

FLN implementation is an art and in the study, it is a science! This means Early Grade teachers must study the concept of Literacy and numeracy as Sciences and when they teach it to their students, it should become seamless and beautiful! Its practice must become effortless. Here is an example to illustrate what it means.

Let's say the teacher is teaching three-letter words in Grade 1. 

Student Activity: Good Morning Children! Today we will play a word game. You will tap your foot when you hear a consonant sound and clap when you hear a vowel. [List of words for Grade 1 - book, cook, door, four, ...] So all, the students know is that they are playing a word game; they are learning some words and spelling these words. 

The teacher however is consciously using a CVC word structure, a list of single-syllable words with two phonemes short /ɒ/ and long /ɔ:/ spelled using a combination of 'oo' and 'ou'. This requires the linguistic knowledge of phonemes, graphemes, and their interplay. 

The key factors of FLN include:

• Reading with comprehension: Making learners competent in doing meaningful reading and writing by the time they enter grade 3.
• Writing with understanding: Developing the basic understanding and competencies related to numeracy and its related concepts among young learners till Grade 2.
• Numeracy: Developing skills among the learners to amalgamate their outside school experiences in their classroom learning to attain foundational literacy and numeracy in a better way.

The curriculum for FLN includes pedagogy, resources, activities, formative assessment, adaptive assessment, mathematical thinking, number sense, spatial understanding, and mathematical vocabulary. Teaching integrates literacy and numeracy through The ELPS approach (Experience, Language, Pictures, Symbols) It includes teaching mathematical terminology, as a part of daily language. There is an emphasis on interaction and communication using precise language and mathematical ideas.  

This, however, presupposes a well-defined curricular content exists, which it does, and that the teachers are well conversant with the explicit and implicit nuances of the curriculum; including - learning outcomes, teaching-learning method, assessment for and of learning, and equally importantly the subject domains, in this case Language and Mathematics. 

I am inclined to believe most of our teachers have a mastery over the subject they teach and they are conversant in the empirical and psychological aspects of education as well. 

What is then the gap?

Rather than answering this question point blank. I will take you through the following and will pose the same question to my reader at the end. Please leave your answer in the comment.

I will begin with the Indic languages - Assamese, Bangla, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri

9.     Konkani

10. Maithili

11. Malayalam

12. Manipuri

13. Marathi

14. Nepali

15. Odia

16. Punjabi

17. Sanskrit

18. Santali

19. Sindhi

20. Tamil

21. Telugu (does not include languages using the Roman script)

1.     Assamese

2.     Bengali

3.     Bodo

4.     Dogri

5.     Gujarati

6.     Hindi

7.     Kannada

8.     Kashmiri

9.     Konkani

10. Maithili

11. Malayalam

12. Manipuri

13. Marathi

14. Nepali

15. Odia

16. Punjabi

17. Sanskrit

18. Santali

19. Sindhi

20. Tamil

21. Telugu

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions 😊

"Fluency: A Critical gaze into the Concept in Indian Languages."