“A STUDY TO DETERMINE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SNAKE AND LADDER GAME ON KNOWLEDGE OF COMMON AILMENTS AMONG PRIMARY SCHOOL CHILDREN OF SELECTED SCHOOL KANPUR”

Abstract

The health of children is of vital importance of all societies because children are the basic sources of the future of mankind. Gaming is an educational strategy that facilitates and reinforces student learning in a stimulating and dynamic format .A pre-experimental and evaluative research approach was used with one group pre-test post test design to evaluate the effectiveness of the Snake Ladder game on ‘knowledge of common ailments’. The study was conducted in selected school in . Assumption English School selected for the study. The sample composed of 60 primary school children. A purposive sampling technique was used. A structured knowledge questionnaire on selected common ailments was used for data collection. Snake and Ladder game on ‘Knowledge of common ailments ‘was developed by the investigator. The content validity of the GAME was established by ten experts against the criteria checklist, based on suggestions of the experts and finding of pre-testing the final draft of GAME was prepared. Regarding the effectiveness of Snake and Ladder on ‘knowledge of common ailments’, it was found to be effective in terms of increasing the knowledge scores. The major findings of the study were: the post- test knowledge scores were higher than the pre-test knowledge scores and the differences between the pre-test and post-test scores were statistically significant at 5% level. ‘t’ (59) =19.16, p<0.05. This indicates that GAME was an effective method of imparting information to the children regarding common ailments. From the statistical analysis it was clear that there was significant increase in the knowledge level of the children regarding common ailments after administration of the GAME. Regarding association between the baseline variables with pre-test and post-test knowledge scores it was found that there was no significant association between the variables like age, sex, religion, education, ordinal position, number of siblings, type of family and monthly income of family of children with pre-test and post-test knowledge scores. Findings of the study score shows that Snake and Ladder game was an effective teaching strategy in increasing the knowledge of the children on common ailments.