Good morning Teachers and Parent,
Welcome to my blog and to class. Today is Saturday May 9, 2020.
I want us to together discuss the issue of pupils sleeping in the classroom, so that together we could seek ways of helping each other proffer a solution to it, that's if there be any; of course there's no problem without a solution. This one will not be the first.
Before we proceed into the discussion, I would like us to quiz ourselves few questions so to aid our proper understanding of the content discussed. Thus, the following question are pertinent.
Background information
Please read and if possible reread these salient questions.
- Is it okay for the learners to sleep inside the classroom?
- What could possibly cause learners to sleep-off in their classes?
- Would you as a parent be happy to discover that your child spends almost half of his time in school for sleep?
- What would probably make a child play all through the day to the extent that the parents would be begging him to sleep, yet the same child sleeps of just hours after he arrives school?
Any solution to this challenge?
Rather than rush into discussion how to solve the problem at hand, I guess that it important to look at the root cause so as to avoid it's re-occurrence.
Causes of sleeping in the classroom among learners
One of the immediate cause of sleeping in classroom is the issue of over feeding. I noticed lately that some parents overfeed their kids at home before sending them to school. Whatsoever be their reason for doing so is kinda not clear to us, but I suspect that one of such reason is that some parents wants their kids to look health, others desire that they eat enough to sustain them until the time they'd be returning home. Other set of parent overfeed because of the fear of being mocked by their neigbours that they cannot feed their children well.
Hmmmm, this is quite sad because the result of this inconsequential act by parents who sometimes are not well informed, is that the food seem to act as sleeping dose which makes them dose off at any slight minute of inactivity in the class. I remember years back, there was a child of about 3 years of age and who then was in the pre-nursery class. He always felt quite comfortable sleeping in the class just after about an hour of arriving school.
This had been going on for weeks until the school management scheduled conference with the kid's parent. And you would not believe what we discovered. We were shocked knowing that the 3year old kid has always been fed with garri or foofoo and soup every blessed. You know what the metabolic composition of such food is. I mean such food was not meant for a kid of such nature.
More so, aside causing dizziness in class, overfeeding of the child could destroy the child's digestive system either by enlarging the intestine. As such, there is need to draw the attention of parents to the effect of this act as such does no good to the child but rather makes the child to miss lessons for sleep which is the very essence of coming to school.
So as a teacher what would you do if you had such pupil in your class?
Here are things I think I could help keep the learners that oversleep in check.
- Make your class lively, adopt a play way or role play method to teach the pupils.
- Watch out for that pupil that exhibits such characteristics and engage him or her in classroom activities or games that would be involving their hands and brains.
- Advice the parent not to overfeed them but rather eat and reserve the other for the day.
- Take the learning outside the classroom to the field, garden or open space where there is shade for the learners. Believe me there's nothing that triggers participation in the class like outside learning environment. Here learners get curious about things they see and touch. This
I just hope that this tip was useful to you, please come by tomorrow as I will be discussing other factors that causes sleep in the classroom.
Thank you for your time.