Learning through classroom projects

Date and Time  : 07-06-2020, 10:00 am

Facilitator: Mrs. Purna J. Patil, Govt. Girls’ Ashram school, Bhaliwadi, Karjat

Purna ma’am shared the following projects and activities, which she had conducted in her school and discussed their possible benefits for students.

  1. Balsabha:
    Under this project, students started conducting different programs for themselves. This type of program is named ‘Balsabha’. They performed different tasks like planning, anchoring during the execution of these Balsabhas. And played different roles too like the chairperson of the program, anchor, etc. PP mentioned that this project helped students to overcome their fear of public speaking & reduced their stage fear. It gave scope to their latent qualities. After the conduction of these Balsabhas, many students including the last benchers started participating in elocution competition & learned to deliver speeches with confidence and without hesitation.
  2. For the topic, ‘Types of houses’ PP told her students to make model of any house, which they have seen in their surroundings. Students participated enthusiastically in this model making activity. They felt proud to display their models. They became happy when other teachers’ visited their models. Moreover, this activity gave them confidence about making & presenting the things.
  3. School without bag:
    Under this project, PP took her students on the ground and told them to draw circles on the ground with the help of thread and rangoli. Then students were asked to show radius, diameter, and chord in those circles. Through this activity, students realized that every time they don’t require pen, pencil, notebook to learn.
  4. Dose to the brain:
    PP mentioned that this project is implemented in the last academic year. In this project, PP used to write a puzzles or questions on the board that had kept in the visible area of the school. Every morning she used to do this. Students used to read these puzzles, questions while passing through this area and try to find out their answers. Whenever they know the answers, they used to come to the teacher in excitement to tell their answer. Small girls started noting down these puzzles. This project encouraged students to think. PP suggested that this project should implement in all the schools.
  5. Visit to the lab:
    Under this project, students of grade 5th to 7th were taken to the lab once in a week. During this lab visit, teachers not only showed but also allowed students to handle different lab equipments. PP mentioned that if students get an opportunity to handle lab equipments when they are in lower grades, they won’t get frightened to use these equipments when they will go in higher grades. It will be easy for them to use these apparatus in the future.
  6. Making science models & conducting scienceexhibition: Since many students cannot take part in science exhibitions conducted at district levels as these events are often far from their school place and have limited entries. Teachers started conducting science exhibitions in their school itself where maximum students could participate. This gave students idea about science exhibitions and they started exploring more information about their project topics for these exhibitions.
  7. Activity at morning assembly: In this activity, during each morning assembly one of the students used to tell one definition and discuss five question-answers. Since every student’s turn comes for this, students started preparing different questions to discuss on their turn and tried to find out their proper answers. As few definitions were repeated in this daily activity, it helped students remembered those definitions very well.
  8. PP used to give her class students  ‘Children magazines’ during vacation for reading so that they will become habitual to reading. PP also started giving books as a birthday gift and as a prize when students win any competition. This generated some curiosity in students about books. They are always eager to see which books they will get.

Activities and experience shared by others:

  • Satyawati Rawool ma’am shared her experience where she had given her students an opportunity to build models of different types of houses. She told students to think as a designer and build their model of house using less material. She said that teachers could make use of students’ skills by asking questions to them. It is necessary for both teachers and students to remain active in TLP. She also suggested NDD to share an article ‘Bheem’s nailcutter’ with all. SR also suggested an activity for students where they have to note down the new things they learn each day, their way of learning, it’s usefulness for them and should think about with whom they can share it. She mentioned that we don’t do documentation of activities conducted for students. She suggested that we can write blogs for teachers’ experiences.
  • Shaila madam praised Purna ma’am for the different activities she conducted in her school and mentioned that she is very active teacher. She mentioned one of the activities that conducted in her school; where students are allow to read different books throughout the day which they like. She has also compiled the useful informative articles from the newspapers and made her own collection of it. She shares this collection with her students.
  • Deepti madam mentioned an activity for geography subject. She said that for this activity we could divide students in groups and tell them to showcase culture of different regions or states of India through their costumes.
  • Sandhya Thakur madam mentioned that Purna ma’am has good communication skill and doing great job as a teacher. She shared the things she had observed recently. She said that in Goa market once in a week children of farmers come in the market and sell whatever things grown in their field. They carry out exchange of money on their own. She mentioned that this helps them to understand different things like selling cost of grains, vegetables, money exchange, profit-loss that involves mathematics.
  • Sugra ma’am encouraged teachers to write article based on their teaching experiences and the activities they conducted for their students. And gave advice to send the written articles to the magazines like ‘Jeevanshikshan’ for publication.
  • NDD agreed with Sugra ma’am and said that if these activities conducted by teachers will get publish then other teachers’ will also get an inspiration. And publishing articles based on teaching experience is one of the best way to reach out  these activities to maximum number of teachers.

Report prepared by: Ms. Mayuri Pawar.