At a time when education policies are pointing at making the content more relatable and the process more interesting, how does one talk about Gandhi and the freedom struggle in a way that is interesting to students in primary school?

The main goal of maths education in schools is the ​‘mathematisation’ of a child’s thinking. Clarity of thought and pursuing assumptions to logical conclusions is central to the mathematical enterprise. There are many ways of thinking, and the kind of thinking one learns in mathematics is an ability to handle abstractions and an approach to problem-solving. (Position Paper, NCERT)

A student brought up the point of discrimination against transgenders in the conversation. This was not something I had thought of while planning my lesson for the day, but I was glad to have someone raise the issue because it highlighted the kind of impact the session had on them.

Perhaps the most encouraging news is that this successful model has inspired the Samagra Shiksha, Puducherry, to establish 50 more similar ECE Resource Centres in the academic year (2023−24) across all districts of Puducherry.

द्वारा : यशस्वी द्विवेदी ; सम्‍पादन : राजेश उत्‍साही | Sep 22, 2023

बच्चों से टीचर ने प्रश्न का क्या मतलब होता है, इस पर बात की। उन्होंने चर्चा की कि प्रश्न का मतलब होता है कि वह आपको कुछ निर्देश दे रहे हैं, बता रहे हैं कि आपको आख़‍िर क्या करना है? प्रश्न एक ही होता है मगर उसके जवाब देने के और लिखने के तरीक़े अलग – अलग होते हैं।

In anganwadi centres, spatial learning is fostered through various activities, such as playing with building blocks, puzzles, and educational games, that are designed to help children develop spatial awareness. Additionally, anganwadi centres can incorporate elements of sensory integration therapy to help children develop spatial awareness.

Local governments were found to be lacking in ideas, experience and expertise on the tasks that were allocated to them by the Constitution. This resulted in many CSOs taking up the cause and working directly with Gram Panchayats or indirectly through capacity building, advocacy, research and documentation to support these.

Even though the objective of the course was to help teachers in developing their English language proficiency, we found that teachers also understood and appreciated the method of teaching and learning English that was used in the course.

Girls seemed to have a better conceptual understanding than boys. The reason behind this could be their lack of interest in studies as most of the boys who attend government schools are those who have been denied admission to private schools for various reasons. Boys are given remedial practice in subjects during the time the girls go for their self-defence sessions.

Social change that is envisioned by the Vaishyas as a traditional social group which is invested in businesses, could be different from that envisioned by the middle-class or new-generation capitalists (who may be from the educated middle-class). The former has gained from their beliefs, culture and community networks. Even when they make more money, they are less likely to get out of their norms, beliefs, culture and networks, which are enabling factors for their wealth acquisition. Hence, the demand for broad-based social change or modernisation may be weaker among them.

By Gladson M E | Jan 24, 2023

The Kalika Chetarike programme is a notable initiative by the Karnataka Government for the learning recovery of government school students. A full academic year has been kept aside for this recovery. Specific and dedicated efforts have been invested in preparing materials and for teachers to carry out the learning recovery processes in classrooms. The content has been carefully selected from foundational literacy and numeracy skills, important learning outcomes from two previous grades and essential learning outcomes of the current grade.

The biggest challenge here is that governments, industry and academia, for various reasons, have not embraced sustainable farming practices. Much of the scientific research and technologies released into the mainstream simply do not appreciate the interconnectedness of things, especially in living systems and the self-regulatory mechanisms that exist in nature.

The back-to-school activities created a great interest among the children and teachers made use of this eagerness to connect activities to foundational literacy and numeracy. We suggested that teachers help students create simple stories and from there was born the idea of conducting a Reading Festival in the school.

Visualisation is an essential skill that needs to be developed in students. Without it, imagination and ideas cannot flourish. Lessons like this one are included so that visualisation skills can be developed but are mostly ignored in the teaching. These lessons can be taught through interesting activities to make the class and the teaching equally enjoyable. The activity used in this lesson included gross motor, fine motor and psychomotor skills that also help teachers to better understand their students.

Drawing from their social contexts entails, among other things, making use of their colloquial parlances and spatial familiarities. Their learning should, hence, evolve into knowing and feeling, and not be confined to information only. Arousal of ​‘feeling’ is for me the first step towards building a communal classroom. The next aspect to think of is classroom readiness, that is, to adopt flexible methods and not strict adherence to a standardized, fixed style of teaching.

We observed that when the difficulty level increases, students’ learning problems also increased in a specific learning skill. This will help us to focus on the students’ problem areas. This data will also help us plan and conduct workshops and seminars on specific learning problems. The results of the survey were shared with teachers and were useful in selecting suitable worksheets based on each student’s learning level.

We need not give up on the formal spaces though. Play, like creativity, is a commodity which is required also to sustain the state and market. We can indeed find ways of incorporating playfulness in developing the curriculum. For example, ​‘what if’ discussions which seek to imagine a world in which some norm is broken – what if I were the king or what if adding two and two makes five and five and five make seven?

Play is a purposeless activity, engaged in freedom, pleasure and a creative mood. It creates an illusory world in which familiar objects and persons assume new meanings and roles. In being purposeless and illusory, it is beyond logical and moral judgements.

Till when is education going to remain in conflict with survival? Why is it that something as crucial as education took 60 years to become a fundamental right? And how much more time is it going to take to ensure equity in the provision of quality education?

For this study, the readers chose the book The Diary of a Young Girl: Anne Frank translated to Hindi. It was read regularly for two months, one hour a day, by this group of adolescents. As they read, they discussed and interpreted the text relating it to their own situation. As the study progressed, newer elements related to the story, a movie on the theme and a history textbook were included.

I wonder if I was teaching them in their regular school, how much time would have been spent on managing various things in the classroom. While I detest the virtual mode of learning on various grounds, I feel this sort of one-to-one connection is effective and somewhat essential to sustain the interest of children in their learning. But this can only be complementary and not a substitute for the regular, in-person teaching-learning process.

I used the pile of notebooks lying in the room to establish the same point for the ones who might not have understood. The time invested was more than what I would have done if I were a regular teacher but the outcome was that the girl who had earlier said that she dislikes mathematics, answered my recapitulation question, ​‘why do we learn multiplication’ by saying that ​‘it helps us add easily’.

By Srijita Chakraborty | Aug 18, 2020

A group of 15 odd girls sat in a room with a sole laptop in front of them while I was on the other side, in another city. Engaging them in a virtual setup was no mean feat. By trial and error, we were able to find methods that worked for us as a team. Now, in my second year of teaching, I wanted to pen some of the techniques that proved most effective in my previous year.

In the Sheo block, located around 50 km from Barmer city, which was the biggest block in the Barmer district until recently, public elementary schools run within numerous constraints. Such constraints are hardly recognised or publicised and are rarely addressed.

By Srijita Chakraborty | Nov 20, 2019

Khadijatul Kubra Girls’ Mission (KKGM) is a mission exclusively for girls. Situated in the Bainan village of the Howrah district in West Bengal, it prides itself in providing convenient, quality education to Muslim girls, many of who may have otherwise dropped out.

By Srijita Chakraborty | Sept 10, 2019

A Gurgaon-based volunteer shares her experience of teaching spoken English online to a group of 17-year-olds in a home for destitute girls in West Bengal.

By Pratim Roy, Sarasmeetha Pathy and Anita Varghese | June 4, 2019

The NFLC curriculum brings together theory and practice, scientific and traditional knowledge, and quantitative and qualitative methods in a 15-week programme. Hosted by Cornell University’s study abroad programme, it is approved by all seven undergraduate colleges of the university.