The new academic year in city schools is will focus on innovative teaching methods, skill-based evaluation and value-based education.
“Students lack value based education so this year we plan to reduce the weekly tests to two from three or four, and concentrate on value-based education,” said Seema Buch, principal of the Gundecha Education Academy in Kandivli. This year, the school plans to focus on developing life skills through various interactive sessions and workshops.
The school has tied up with Doordarshan producer, Manju Singh’s Lesson in the dark program and Edu Media’s School Cinema, both of which use films as a medium to impart life lessons and values for children to tackle everyday challenges.
“Such workshops help enhance a child’s creative thinking. We will have a rubric [a system used to grade work] to evaluate the children in these sessions,” added Buch.
While there are some schools that are looking to introduce activity-based evaluation, there are others who are concentrating on developing a particular skill among their students.
“It is important that learning is skill-based. Most of the students lack the ability to communicate well. Even a student who scores 90% may not be able to express an idea so oral communication is important,” said Aparajita Rana, principal, Greenlawns school in Worli.
The school plans to concentrate on oral communication in the coming year. “Currently, everything is very content heavy. From this year, teachers will give assignments that help enhance communication skills. For example, students may be expected to review something and then present it in class,” she added. The school will also invite people from various professions to speak to the children.
Some schools are concentrating on changing things at the beginning by checking whether a student’s readiness skills. “Children learn to read a word or two up to senior KG and then suddenly in class 1, they are expected to read long sentences. It is necessary to ensure if children are ready for the move to a higher class,” said Sailee Mantri, head of pre-primary section at Nalanda Public School, Mulund.
The school plans on using interactive games and cards to train children to recognise, read and write well. “People are happy if children can write numbers up to 100 but learning is about understanding why the number seven is bigger than the number three. For eg: if you show them seven and three apples, then only will they understand the difference,” added Mantri.
The school also conducts phonetics workshops for children and their parents to help students learn to spell easily.
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