August 2014 – Teacher Plus

Let’s introduce ourselves!

The last issue of the magazine marked our 25th anniversary and celebrated the role of teachers in today’s complex education scenario. What we would have liked to have done, but did not have space for, was a glimpse into our very modest office to meet the small team behind Teacher Plus. With most of our authors and illustrators, we have built a relationship that has carried us over the years, but we know our readers mostly only through the labels on the brown covers that carry the magazine across the country. So here’s a little insight into who we are, the minds and eyes and hands behind each issue of Teacher Plus. Nirmala has been with us for the longest period, having joined in 2005 when the magazine was still a bi-monthly tabloid sized 24-pager. She came with a solid experience of editorial desk work at a leading newspaper and brought with her a rigour and depth to the planning and handling of copy, apart from an entry point to a large network of writers. Kumar (S Rajendra Kumar), who handles layout and design, came on board in 2007, with a background in working on both short and long format publications at a large eye research institute. Shalini also joined in 2007 just as the magazine made the transition to the monthly periodicity. Combining newspaper desk experience with copy editing at an educational organization, she has developed an eye for detail and a knack for handling difficult editorial decisions at short notice. Sushma, the organizational anchor of Teacher Plus, came on board in 2008 and helped us tide over a period of great uncertainty, helping put systems in place, tightening the publication calendar, and nurturing our fledgling marketing efforts. Divya joined the group in mid 2012 right after completing her master’s in communication. She helps maintain the web presence and is the link with our main collaborator and supporter – Azim Premji University. Srinivas, the newest entrant to the group, handles data entry, subscriptions, circulation and mailing, and is discovering the intricacies of database management. …and of course there is the growing network of columnists, guest editors and contributors of both written and visual inputs, who make us complete. I have been with the magazine intermittently from its inception in 1986, to 1999, after which I have been continuously associated as editor. I’m a shadowy presence on the pages and the credit for the actual paper, ink and their combination to form meaning, goes to

The long and short of ‘measurement’

Neerja Singh ‘Measurement’ as a lesson is a classic example of how removed our classroom can be from life around us. The metric table, standard units of measurement, our helpful mnemonics all work together to present this highly practical lesson in sterile and numerical terms to our students. It would take just one query on estimation of a class to verify this appalling disconnect. Estimation really is the biggest test and reward of a thoroughly delivered chapter on ‘measurement’. The teacher’s aim ought to be to bring up children capable of translating into units what objects ‘feel’ or ‘look’ like to them without reaching for a graded gadget. Take the games ‘Guess the cake weight’ or ‘Tell the candy count’ popular in fairs and fetes. A glance at the sheepish entries scrawled by adults makes it crystal clear that not many of them sat through a well taught session on ‘measurement’. A successful class on measuring parameters would spew forth students capable of estimating the length of a school corridor, the weight of a school bag, the capacity of their water bottles with reasonable accuracy. Unfortunately, even the ace graders have big round eyes to offer if asked to take a guess at weight, distance, or volume. Figures and tables distract children. Neatly aligned values make them lazy. A good class will require of them an alert even if somewhat confused mental thrashing around. Unless they compare from scratch, juxtapose one against the other, apply their mental visuals to making educated guesses, they will forget all the measurement tests they got assessed A1 on. The author has a background and training in education and media, and has worked in advertising, public relations, documentary film making and feature journalism. Her interest lies in the role of motivation, an all-round exposure and multiculturalism in the educational increment of children. A blogger with a keen interest in the evolving social dynamics and their influence on young people, she maintains a blog at http://confessionsofanambitiousmother.blogspot.in/. She can be reached at neersingh02@hotmail.com. This is an article for subscribers only. You may request the complete article by writing to us at editorial@gamart.in.

“Drawing in” the right brain

Rupa Ramachandran The topic of learning difficulties has been in and out of the limelight for some time now. Much talked about, much misunderstood and mysterious to most people. When I was asked to share my experiences about teaching children with learning difficulties, I thought about what I should focus on. I felt that as a first step, discussing aspects of children with learning difficulties and the importance of inclusion would be most useful. What is learning difficulty? It is a hidden difficulty as the child has no obvious physical disabilities. It is characterized by a difficulty in the processing of language resulting in deficiencies in spelling, reading, and writing. Some of these children may have problems with math also. It is best illustrated with an example. I distinctly remember a child enunciating “s, u, n”, letter by letter, and then reading the word as “hot”. He was processing the feeling of heat from the sun. He was not reading literally, but he was relating to the feeling the sun produced in him. He was processing the input in a very different way, a different path from the vast majority of us. In his comprehension of the sun’s nature he was not wrong. But, how do we educate this child to read, read literally? Do we dismiss him as stupid or differently-abled? This child had other abilities; he was exceptionally creative in drawing. He could draw brilliantly, but he suffered humiliation as he could never read well. His parents also suffered, first because they thought their son was not putting in effort, then because they did not understand what was going on and finally because they did not have guidance about how to deal with the problem. It is still extremely rare for parents to get good advice on how to deal with the problem. Most of the time, they go from pillar to post and acquire much baggage of guilt, worry, anger, and frustration before they are able to understand what is happening. Even in these days of Taare Zameen Par, few schools have a resource room. Few teachers in the mainstream are aware of what symptoms they should look for, as they are not trained for it. The universities do not include a chapter on “how to identify hidden disabilities” in teaching methodology in their B.Ed. courses. Other disabilities manifest outwardly and present no problem to the parents and teachers in so far as identification is considered. I have come across children who

The pursuit of happiness

Bubla Basu Long before we were attacked by the likes of Pokemon, Schulz cartooned Peanuts for entire families to enjoy. There was an idea of happiness which he illustrated through his Charlie Brown characters. Happiness was being able to reach the doorknob, happiness was a bag of jellybeans of all colours – except green(!), happiness was finding the piece of a jigsaw puzzle with the top of the sailboat and a little bit of the sky… happiness was a warm puppy. In other words, happiness came at the end of struggling for achievement, from being able to search for and make choices, from concentration to detail and simply from being gentle with a creature in need of comfort and reassurance. Now, happiness is delivered. Parents rush to open doors or even have sensor sliding doors, jellybeans come along sorted with nothing to discover, jigsaw puzzles have sound and music cues on the internet announcing correct answers and puppies can be abandoned for ever multiplying mall pleasures. “Happiness,” announced an 18 year old student rather grandly, “is underrated.” I am still bewildered at what that expression means, as I often am, by the idea that happiness is a gift that is supposed to simply land in one’s lap. While a large number of gifts do land in the laps of those who are victims of the malaise called entitlement, few such gifts bring the kinds of happiness Schulz implied. On her return from a holiday in Greece, a 15 year old student said her family “didn’t do much,” but they did visit the malls. Another student, also about 15, who had a short stay in Egypt said the only thing that was different between Egypt and India was that “they work on weekends.” For those of us who believe that education includes experiencing and imbibing cultures of a wider world, these responses are not amusing. In my city, Mumbai, students who aspire to happiness in IB schools find themselves dazzled by whatever these glamorous and expensive institutions have to offer. A parent whom I know paid two years’ fees in one school, but when his daughter announced it wasn’t competitive enough for her, he forfeited the money and paid more than that to admit her into the school she wanted to be part of. “I don’t want her to be unhappy,” said the loving father. “You don’t love me,” said a 15 year old daughter to her mother. “If you did, we would have holidays abroad.

Mathematical induction

Monica Kochar The market is flooded with learning material for primary and middle school maths lessons. However, for senior classes the question remains – what is the best design for the lessons? This article is an attempt to answer that question. I have taken the topic of mathematical induction, for this is what students find difficult to grasp. ‘What exactly is happening here?’ is a question one hears often! The principle is taught followed by problem solving. Hardly anyone knows the reasoning! Designing the lesson for senior classes Step 1 – Modelling problem Always begin a topic with a modelling problem. A modelling problem is based on real life and requires the use of maths in solving it. No formulas or formal terminology comes in at this point. Let the students use any method. Our first objective is to get them thinking. Strategy a. Divide students into groups of 4-5 (this ensures that no one is left behind). b. Instruct each group to look out for its members and help where needed. c. Hand out the following problem: A post office sells stamps of 3p and 5p only. The minimum postage required in the city is 8p. The official proudly says “any postage above 8p can be paid using a combination of 3p and 5p stamps” or 3a+5b where a and b are whole numbers, 0 to ∞. Check if he is right. Use any method to solve this. d. Spend about 5 minutes discussing the problem. If needed, give a small hint. Check for a few numbers: 8=3+5 (one of 3 and one of 5) or 3a+5b 9=3+3+3 (three of 3 and none of 5) or 3a+5b 10=5+5 (none of 3 and two of 5) or 3a+5b e. Set your timer to 20 minutes so that students stay focussed. If possible, display the timer where everyone can see it or ask a student in each group to be the time keeper. f. After 20 minutes, ask each group how far they went. If a group solved the problem, then let them share it with the whole class. g. If no one could solve it, teacher could give more time or move on with hints and solution. (Hints for the teacher) After checking for 8, 9, and 10, check if the next cluster also shows the same combination 11=3+3+5=3a+5b 12=3×4=3a+5b 13=3+5+5=3a+5b It does! Check for the next cluster of 3 numbers 14, 15, 16…it will work! Step 2 – Reasoning Strategy a. Teacher to explain

Soil – The laboratory of life

Sujata C The Earth is the only known planet with a soil cover. The word ‘Earth’ originally meant soil, later it began to mean the planet itself. A project on soil should be fun for children who love playing with it, getting their hands dirty, jumping into muddy pools. For the farmer, soil is no less than a mother, for the healer it is a medicine, for the poet a muse and so on. Soil is indeed the very laboratory of life. The nutrients present in the soil have life-giving properties. Soil is a non-renewable, natural resource , yet we take it so much for granted and use, misuse and abuse it for our never ending needs without so much as a thought for the future generations. To increase awareness about soil, 2015 has been designated as the UN International Year for Soils. December 5 of every year is celebrated as World Soil Day. So what can you expect your class to learn from soil? Add to this list. Chemistry Biology Medicine Geology/Geography Physics Why does the Tower of Pisa lean? It is said the Tower of Pisa in Italy is leaning partially due to some fault line in the soil structure below the tower. It is a live model for students of geology and construction engineering. Soil mechanics is a major branch of the discipline of construction engineering as it is a determinant in the life of the building. Principles of geology, soil physics, geotechnical engineering are applied by builders of dams, bridges and high rise buildings. The author is a freelance writer based in Hyderabad. She can be reached at sujata117@gmail.com. This is an article for subscribers only. You may request the complete article by writing to us at editorial@gamart.in.

Fly on my wall

Geetha Iyer “What sort of insects do you rejoice in, where you come from?” the Gnat inquired. “I don’t rejoice in insects at all,” Alice explained … Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass Insects are not the best liked creatures, especially flies. Irritating pests is how we dismiss them and their close relatives, the gnats, midges, and mosquitoes. Which fly are we talking about by the way? Butterfly, dragonfly, stonefly, snakefly, sawfly, scorpionfly, firefly, mayfly or damselfly? No, not them as none of the insects listed above is a fly; they all have the suffix fly, perhaps a reference to their mode of locomotion. These pseudoflies are treated differently while true flies are dismissed as irritants or swatted! Swatting flies is sometimes a game with small children, much to the disapproval of adults! Why, insects that are not true flies, have this synonym is an interesting exploratory activity that can be taken up in languages or sciences, but what you will read here is about true flies – insects that belong to the Order Diptera. ‘Diptera’ means two wings (Di-two, ptera-wings) and the characteristic feature of a true fly is this – unlike others from the insect world they possess only one pair of wings. Fly, mosquito, gnat and midges are other common insects of this Order Diptera. There are 1,52,244 species of Diptera to be found worldwide. They are the third largest group in the insect world, the first position going to Coleoptera (beetles and weevils) and the second to Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies). Housefly is the most common representative of true flies. But you will be amazed to know that there are some stunningly beautiful representatives observable in the world of Diptera. While there are a number of flies that bite and carry diseases, there are several that are very useful, not worthy of disdainful dismissals! The author is a consultant for science and environment education. She can be reached at scopsowl@gmail.com. This is an article for subscribers only. You may request the complete article by writing to us at editorial@gamart.in.

Water links

Yasmin Jayathirtha During the holidays one takes a break from classes, curriculum, and the day-to-day planning of lessons. It is at this time that one thinks of one’s subject in a broader manner. The May/June issue of Teacher Plus on geography was particularly inspiring. The articles covered a wide range of disciplines and it got me thinking about all the subjects chemistry intersects with. Geography, of course, in earth science, and environmental science are the most obvious. While the study of chemistry as a subject has all the principles and details, I wonder if students are able to extract the relevant reactions and relate them to the concepts they study in the other classes. Some of the experiments may not be performed at all in chemistry classes since they may not be necessary to illustrate the concepts being learnt. It will be good to explore experiments that act as a link between subjects; experiments lying on the periphery of two subjects and therefore neglected by both. Over the next few months, I would like to look at experiments that will illustrate concepts in geography and environmental science. I hope they will be helpful both to the chemistry teacher, wanting to make the subject relevant to the real world, and to the other teachers to illustrate and establish links. None of these experiments is new and what is being done is to sequence them differently. Water is one of the topics studied with different emphasis in chemistry, biology, geography, and environmental science. Let us look at a sequence of experiments that will be appropriate for a geography lesson. The author works with Centre for Learning, Bengaluru. She can be reached at yasmin.cfl@gmail.com. This is an article for subscribers only. You may request the complete article by writing to us at editorial@gamart.in.

Getting future ready

Geetika Saluja The 21st century demands that we all know how to think – to reason, analyze, weigh evidence, solve problems and to communicate effectively. These are no longer skills that only the elite in the society must master: they are essential survival skills for all of us. In schools today, students are not learning how to think; they don’t care about what they read, nor are they learning to communicate ideas orally or in writing. They memorize names and dates in history but cannot explain the significance of historical events. How often do our students write essays in which they put forth their own interpretation of a piece of literature or observation and inference of an experiment without being told what to observe? They may be learning to add, subtract, and multiply, but they have no understanding of how to think about numbers. Our schools were never designed to teach students how to think. If a few children learn such skills it is more by accident than by design. How often does a teacher ask the class, “So what do you think about…”? I don’t mean once in a while, I mean every day. The longer our children are in school, the less curious they become. Time spent on test preparation and memorizing content knowledge comes at the expense of teaching students to use their minds well. For the most part, teachers haven’t been trained to teach students to think. There is a need to start teaching critical and creative thinking as soon as children are capable of abstract thinking. They need to learn the inquiry process. In order to grow from being ‘knowledge accumulators’ to ‘knowledge processors and creators’, students need to master both “left brain” skills – such as critical thinking and problem solving, accessing and evaluating information – and “right brain” skills – such as curiosity, imagination, and creativity. The author is Academic Coordinator, St. Kabir School, Naranpura. She can be reached at geetika.b.saluja@gmail.com. This is an article for subscribers only. You may request the complete article by writing to us at editorial@gamart.in.

Making notes…naturally!

V Santharam Having introduced students to nature and the outdoors, how can we ensure that their interest in their surroundings and their inhabitants is kept alive? One of the ways in which one can sustain the interests of children in Nature is by maintaining a nature journal. A nature journal is a personalized record of one’s observations – of things one notices during various field trips and walks or even by just looking out of a window in our own garden. Apart from merely documenting observations, a nature journal could include thoughts and reflections about the various things one observes or feels. This is an ideal medium to gather and reflect one’s views pertaining to various aspects of natural history. A nature journal helps one to strengthen the powers of observation, describe their observations as accurately as possible and draw inferences from these observations. One realizes the value of a nature journal when one goes through one’s entries after a gap of time. This helps refresh pleasant memories and remember various events in nature that had been forgotten. These entries can also serve as a documentation of various natural history events over the years and can help in comparing past events with present day occurrences such as dates of flowering of a tree or the arrival or departures of various migrant species in a locality. This sort of information helps us to piece together observations over the years to better understand the impact of global warming and the responses it evokes among various species of plants and animals. There is no specific format for a nature journal. One can adapt it to suit one’s own requirements. What is basically necessary is a notebook and a pen. When required, one could add drawings and sketches to supplement one’s notes. These could be mere line drawings or colour sketches or even paintings. Photographs could be added when available. Incorporating specimens of pressed leaves or flowers or bark rubbings could further enhance the journal’s value. The writing itself could be in the prose format, or in verse, or a combination of both. Rather than writing self-consciously, taking into account grammatical niceties, a nature journal should be spontaneous and have candid writing, reflecting one’s moods and feelings. Apart from all the observations made, the journal entries should include the date, time of day, notes on weather conditions, and the habitat in which the observations were made. Names of others present on the occasion could help as at a later

Month: August 2014

Let’s introduce ourselves!

The long and short of ‘measurement’

“Drawing in” the right brain

The pursuit of happiness

Mathematical induction

Soil – The laboratory of life

Fly on my wall

Water links

Getting future ready

Making notes…naturally!

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