Changing seats to change minds

Usha Raman

How can a teacher build positive classrooms, one where the students are all responsive and more engaged? One way is to bring about a change in the seating pattern at least occasionally so that students see and think differently. Students could also be given a say in how the classroom should operate. This way their sense of ownership in the education process increases. These are but small shifts in everyday learning, but could certainly lead to more positive attitudes and behaviour.

Playing with rhymes

Nabanita Deshmukh
When children in a remote tribal village school in Odisha showed no interest in learning English nursery rhymes, what alternative did the teachers have ? The challenge was to come up with new or modified rhymes that had a cultural connect and which the children could relate to. Read how the teachers responded to their task of creating new rhymes.

Stay hungry … to learn

Aditi Mathur and Ratnesh Mathur
How can teachers encourage children to continue learning? This article suggests that children should be hungry to learn and find out things for themselves. By giving in to all their needs to know and making it easy for them, teachers and parents will only be limiting their learning .

A learning trip for teachers

Jitu Mishra
A two-day field trip for primary school teachers to Dholavira to help them teach and learn social studies turned out to be an engaging and exciting experience. The teachers gained deeper insights into the concepts that they taught and they were also able to appreciate the holistic nature of social studies.

Class of rowdies

Rituparna Biswas and Nitin Das
This article is about a fun film with a simple message on the art of teaching and is a must watch for all students, parents and teachers.

Education and the global citizen

Kathan Shukla
What kind of a citizen does our education system aim at developing? Merely inculcating citizenship values may not be sufficient, because in a globalized world, our country is deeply connected to the international community. Here are some characteristics that a global citizen needs to have in today’s world.

Addressing a parent’s dilemma

Jyothsna Latha Belliappa
The recent child sexual assault case in a Bangalore school has caused widespread anxiety among parents and teachers. This article tries to address a parent’s concern.

Explore, invent and apply

Yasmin Jayathirtha
When teaching new concepts in science, the only way a teacher can assess whether a student has understood or not is to set exercises or provide data and ask for analysis. Here are two experiments that teach reasoning skills to students and are based on exploration, invention and application and do not need previous knowledge.

Drawing out the structure of DNA

Anveshna Srivastava
The structure of the DNA is complex and for most learners diagrams form an important component to understand the concept. However these are not appealing enough for students to connect textual information with them. This article introduces a few diagrams which are simple to draw and if analysed in a certain sequence makes the concept easy to understand.

Green chemistry

Dr. Sneha & Dr. Vishwanath Gogte
Most students find it difficult to connect with Chemistry and do not find the subject appealing. The reasons range from too many complicated equations to hard-to-memorise formulae. However, work-centric learning engages every student in an authentic activity which helps explain the concepts. This article explains how chemistry can be taught while engaging the students in agriculture.