The past year has just gone by and has left in its wake a lot of disruption. From demonetisation to cyclonic storms and political upheavals, the changes have been swift and hard to accept. It is in times likes these that small acts of kindness can make a huge difference, bring out the heroic nature in each one of us and kindle a sense of hope in our humdrum lives.
Subha Vaidyanathan
How can teachers improve the English language skills of their students? While some children are exposed to the language at home, there are others who need special attention. Systematic building of vocabulary from the basics is necessary right from the start. This can be done by using games and activities like word lists. Children not only have fun but without realising it, can hone their skills.
Aditi Mathur and Ratnesh Mathur
Everybody loves a hero because he has so much of heroism in him.Perseverance, courage, sense of humour and righeousness — these are traits that we find in every hero. Can we probe further into ourselves and check if we have them as well? That is because each and everyone of us can be a hero. The authors of this article tell us how we can become one.
Geetha Iyer
Did you know that snakes also build their nests? One would think that since snakes do not have limbs, they may not be able to engage in such a complex activity. However, it is only the King Cobra which builds a nest. In the last part of our series on nests, read about nest building by wild boars, termites, snakes and ants.
Manaswini Sridhar
Idioms are a unique way of expressing yourself and additionally , they also lend a character and richness to the English
language. How can students learn to reflect on the meaning of the idioms and try and use them in their speech and writing so that their conversation and writing is richer and more engaging? The author gives many tips and exercises in this article to help students master their use of idioms.
Prachi Ranadive
Geography can be made more interesting if it is taught outside the classroom. A multi-disciplinary approach will further ensure that the students have a deep understanding of the concepts and also find the learning meaningful and engaging. In this article, the author talks about Rocks which are an often overlooked part of the landscape and how they are integral to human society having been used for centuries to build buildings and even to carve into.
Arun Elassery
In our series on alternative schools, we profile Digantar on the outskirts of Jaipur that is run by Rohit Dhankar and Reena Das. Digantar runs three schools catering to nearly 600 children from the rural areas. The children learn at their own pace, they learn from each other and they are not distributed according to classes. This complete change in direction has changed the lives of many rural children too.
Avneesh Shukla
The second part of the article on separation techniques deals with decantation, filtration and sublimation and evaporation.
Disha Gupta, Adithi Muralidhar and Sugra Chunawala
Robots are a favourite with children and popular too. Because of its popular status, robots can be used as a teaching tool since they provide a fun element for children to explore technology. Keeping this idea in mind, Robotics was introduced at science events to create interest and increase awareness among school children. What happened at these different Robotics workshops and events is explained here in this article.
Shweta Shripad Naik Often, educators as part of their teaching, attempt to bring familiar/known examples from students’ lives into the classroom. When teaching mathematics in schools, this happens on several occasions and in various degrees. Teachers use real life contexts when introducing a concept or conveying a math problem or even while correcting a solution. However, there are certain portions of mathematics teaching that remain unaffected by what real-life mathematics would entail for that situation. In this article, I report how teaching that emphasizes learning of mathematical procedures, limits the use of real-world contexts. Specifically, I discuss how problems that seem obviously solvable from the students’ real life point of view become inaccessible to them, when constrained by the “steps” that school mathematics require. I describe here a lesson from a 7th standard classroom where students are learning to solve problems of profit and loss. This topic is considered part of commercial mathematics. Commercial mathematics is defined as the math that is used in the practical world of commerce and real-life. Among all the topics in mathematics, in this one, the use of real life contexts is inevitable. In the lesson narrated here we see how real-life contexts help students solve the problems, and at the same time cause difficulty for teachers to bring every student to focus on the “steps”. The “steps” are an integral part of teaching mathematics in school and here I describe how giving priority to steps in teaching, that too without understanding, create a disconnected mathematics. I discuss an example from research where educators bring to light alternative strategies that are intrinsic to real-life contexts. Don’t solve the problem, do the “steps”! Punit1 Sir, is a middle school mathematics teacher and teaches students from diverse backgrounds in a low socio-economic locality. He was teaching profit and loss to the students on a particular day. After a rhetorical explanation on how to decide profit or loss in a transaction, he ventured into solving “application” problems. The phrase “application” is commonly used for those type of problems, where one uses the mathematics learned to solve real life problems. He wrote the following problem on the board. “Shaila bought something for Rs. 40 and sold it for Rs. 60, then what happened?” The students immediately responded in chorus, “Profit of Rs. 20”. I got the impression that the students understood the concept of profit. However, Punit Sir was not happy about the chorus answer, he asked everyone to speak one by one. He
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