Meera Bhuvanesh
Buildings tend to inspire strong emotions in many of us. A temple or a church may give us a sense of peace while a more stately structure might inspire awe in us. But have you thought how buildings and architecture can also offer a world of learning possibilities? When children study about buildings, they can draw upon different fields of knowledge —- from math and history to art and design.
Abhishek Bagchi
This article offers some valuable insights on how teachers can really engage with their students in class using data.
Krishna Chebolu
Is the reward system the best way in which educators can increase productivity in children? While it has its advantages since it helps in motivating a child, there are other issues too that one must look at. A happy alternative would be to appreciate a child for his/her uniqueness.
CIPAM team
What is Intellectual Property and how necessary is it for children to not only be creative and innovative but also how they can protect their own creations and respect others’ IP.
Sandeep Yadav, Anveshna Srivastava and Koumudi Patil
The fact that math is a hard subject and difficult to learn is known and educators are doing their bit to make math fun. Here is a board game that connects both fun and basic math learning. The conceptual theme is around area-perimeter.
Anuradha C
How does learning take place, and what type of learning stands in good stead throughout life? All types of learning have their place such as rote learning, conceptual learning and experiential learning. So, the ideal would be to memorize facts, understand the concept behind the facts and apply that understanding to solve problems.
Saurav Shome and Archana Dwivedi
Student clubs in schools are often set up with much fanfare and enthusiasm but lose steam midway because the syllabus is given priority. However, some schools do persist in engaging the students and the results are quite noteworthy. In this article, the authors describe the revival of the eco and the science clubs.
Sheela Ramakrishnan
Can a teacher afford to take risks in her class and experiment with newer ways of teaching? Or should she stick to the tried and tested path, of not leaving her comfort zone? The moot question is how can she even begin to think out of the box? The first step would be to nurture a mindset that says that it is alright to fail and to start looking at effort and not result. Fear and failure need to be a part of the process of learning. This month’s Cover theme looks at risk and experimentation in the classroom.
Usha Raman
How can educators introduce conversations around big issues in the classroom and how can children be helped to think differently when it comes to tackling these issues? Fifteen year-old Greta Thunberg has been an inspiring voice, calling governments across the globe to tackle climate change. It is now up to educators to support the participation of children in movements like this so that they understand what is happening around them and also give them the intellectual tools to navigate through these trying times.
Vijay Gupta Let me share with you a typical scenario in our classrooms. The teacher has been teaching the algorithm of division, and then asks students to calculate 212 divided by 2. Rahul gets the answer 16 and excitedly shares it with the teacher. The teacher shuts him down saying he is wrong. Rahul took the risk of sharing his answer and got a snub. Sooner or later Rahul is likely to convince himself that he can’t learn math. In our work with teachers, across India, over more than a decade, we repeatedly come across this kind of classroom interaction. We believe that such a classroom environment is not conducive for deep learning. Making mistakes, and learning from them, is an essential part of the learning journey. This will not happen in a classroom environment where students think twice before sharing their answer, or explore one more way of solving a problem, or engage with one more aspect of a situation. If you agree with me so far, this article will share with you six ways in which we can start creating an environment where students take a risk, where they look at mistakes as one more opportunity for learning, and are not satisfied with one way of attacking a problem, and also engage in finding out the answer rather than wait for the teacher to give the answer. One, when students respond to a question, do not get busy with whether the answer is right or wrong. A better line of thought is to say – “Let us examine this answer”, and encourage the student to share how he went about figuring out the answer. This should be done irrespective of whether the answer is right or wrong. For our earlier division problem, let Rahul share how he applied the division algorithm and encourage him, and the entire class, to think if the answer seems sensible. As you can see, this division problem is a great opportunity to explain how the division algorithm works. In the first step, when we say divide first ‘2’ of 212 by 2 and get 1, actually what we have done is that we have divided 200 by 2 and have got hundred (that is, 1 in the hundredth place). In the second step, we are actually dividing 10 by 2, and should get 5 but the algorithm is so efficient that it figures out that there is a zero in the tenth place and encourages us to divide
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