Pre-primary education: balanced approach, need of the hour

Anil Kumar Gona
Are we shirking our responsibilities as parents? Do children as young as 2 and 3 need to go to schools? While these may be playschools in name, we must realize that these schools do more than just make our children play building unnecessary stress in little children.

The power of teacher collaboration

Nikisha Kotwal
We are all aware of that proverb, ‘Unity is strength’. When we come together we can achieve great things than we can individually. It is not just the students but teachers too can and should collaborate to teach.

Bittersweet memories of Tagore’s Shantiniketan

Chintan Girish Modi
Rabindranath Tagore is a big name in the field of education. Most of us only know Tagore through his writings and of course Shantiniketan. But what was it really like learning and living under the care and guidance of Tagore?

Books for the library, about the library

G Aruna Kumar
We talk about reviving libraries, drawing students and adults alike to the library. We have brought in art and craft and converted libraries into activity centres. How about introducing children to books on libraries and librarians, as a means of inviting them into the library?

A useful resource despite a few shortcomings

Geetha Iyer
Teaching resources on the natural world are hard to come by and that is why the book, Handbook for Bird Educators is an extremely important addition, even though there is room for improvement, to the very short list of resources that teachers can lay their hands on to teach about nature and its creatures.

Clarity amidst chaos

Usha Raman
The pandemic is still very much present in the world, but after almost two years, people are ready to rebuild their lives. At Teacher Plus we begin this new year with a look at a topic that has been constantly debated upon. Homework. What is homework? Why do students have to do it? What do we intend them to learn from it?

The Koreaboos

Neerja Singh
With easily accessible Internet, the country’s young have a new rage today, everything Korean — Korean music, Korean TV shows, Korean movie stars and Korean pop stars. While on the surface this seems like something that is bringing the world together, helping youngsters understand each other, have we stopped to think about where exactly this kind of exposure will lead our youth to?

Welcoming the whys

Simran Luthra
Homework and assignments are part of every child’s school routine and every teacher’s responsibility. While they are a means to enrich learning, are homework and assignments really serving this purpose? The homework given is so uninspiring that almost always, students end up doing them like a chore. When they don’t know the objectives behind an assignment, they don’t learn anything either. As teachers our job is not merely to give our students homework. If learning is to take place, we have to design creative and thought-provoking assignments and we will have fulfilled our responsibilities only if we ourselves are clear about the ‘why’ of an assignment and are willing to share that ‘why’ with our students. For, the implications of not sharing that why are not small.