Education is a key to unlock one's potential

According to me, education is a key to unlock one's potential. Children who are given right supplement and stimulation arrive at school excited to learn - academically, socially and emotionally. As said, one will reach new heights if they learn to embrace the occasional tumble. A question arises what makes a really capable child give up in the face of failure, while others may be motivated by their failures. Such children require a push, slight guidance, which is also a suggested cure for learned helplessness and that is being done by Sahaya.

During the last session, we organised a computer workshop which stood at a great success having a very good impact on children. students who are really unaware of computers found it difficult when they were orally taught. But I could see them going easy with it after workshops. When it comes to what all the team have provided them, it's really huge. As a part of workshop, they were shown and explained regarding various parts, computer components etc. Apart from this,  students were given presentations and had discussions upon it which allowed them to be clear.
It's a well known fact that drama can always improve one's learning skills compared to any other activities and also a best way of approaching students in case of something difficult for them. They are shown visuals which not just lets them figure out things later but the speech also improves their language expression. I can say, this idea of workshops had truly made children more attentive than usual. As a combined effort can break down the wall of impossibility, the success of computer workshop includes each and every one over there.

On the whole what is done here is-
Go to the students :
Live with them,
learn from them. 
Start with what they know,  
build with what they have. 

All views expressed by - Akhila

Setting up the Reading Challenge

One of our big-picture goals is to build a activity where everyone reads, where everyone shares what they're reading, and where individual purposes and choices for reading are celebrated.

We want to help our students cultivate the habits of lifelong readers. We understand that each student is at a different place on the journey, and through building such activity and offering choice and challenge, we seek to draw each reader further along their path.

Reading Hour
Instead of walking each student in a class through a prescribed series of reading material or language chosen by someone else, we place value on the act of reading. We want to inculcate the values of deliberate practice, with kids immersing themselves in books by providing quality time to read, structure, modeling, and guidance.

It is through this lens that, along with few volunteers we designed the Reading Challenge for different grades. The challenge began last week and will continue through the end of the 2014-15 school year. In last weeks reading challenge for 8th grade, we have few avid readers, as well as many who are still "developing readers." We created the Reading Challenge with the following goals in mind:

  • To empower children s individual interests and preferences
  • To build reading habit
  • To promote wide reading
  • To challenge students to either read more in general[bilingual books] or expand their reading to new genres

We are excited about the first iteration of this activity, open-ended, year-long challenge that offers something to engage every kid. We are keeping track of who reading what book. It is a work in progress and, with our goals in mind and our students' feedback, we will assess the effectiveness of this strategy and make changes to improve it going forward.

Learning Expeditions coming soon

Preparing Students for the Challenges of Tomorrow

The inspiration that made us to think on the other side of the coin.

We always think about new ways and ideas to educate children in many aspects, but the inspiration given by Subhramanya Aditya’s Mother made us to think on different aspect to be taught to the children. That is what ‘Awareness on Health and Hygiene’

“If Health is zero, how can we achieve 100% Knowledge??”

This is what we questioned ourselves… which resulted to this session.
A session on Health and Hygiene - experienced a new way of interacting with children by sharing many thoughts.
It always sounds good when we hear something from the students when we try to project something, which we experienced in our session. The team has prepared some presentation with images on creating awareness on Health, Cleanliness and other Hygiene conditions. Students were very interactive during the session and got quick responses to the questions posed to them. Actually, students were aware of many things, we simply tried to increase the awareness among them. 

For the first time we have seen that no student got bored up with the continuous seminar session. Students were very interested in adding their points to our explanation. They were very much involved in the topics discussed and without any hesitation they accepted our request to spend a few more minutes even after listening to the lunch bell.
Getting out of personal and professional activities, the team struggled to make the day’s social activity a big success by holding discussions and presentation preparations for weeks. But entirely the pain just flew away on receiving smiley thanks from the pupils.

We wrapped up the session with complete satisfaction. Hope to carry this satisfaction in coming sessions too.

Thanks
Ravali Dara

Teacher's Day at ZPHS KP School

One more memorable day at Sahaya. Teacher's day celebrated on 6th September at ZPHS Kukatpally School.

Yes, it happened in Sahaya session . 9th class students played the role of teacher mentoring, teaching  6th and 7th class students. They divided themselves into 6 groups and taught some topics to their juniors. I was really amazed by the way they explained to students by interacting and engaging them with riddles in between to make it interesting.
Parven explaining adverse effects of Plastic usage
Sreeram once said he had life time opportunity to experience the best mentoring session at ZPHS Narsapur. I felt sad that I couldn't experience such session. But I don’t regret anymore.

We had a wonderful experience in our last session by being a student and listening to 9th class students Parven and Rupali's class. Am not at all exaggerating on their teaching skills, they didn't require any volunteer to control the class. Students listened very keenly and showered with doubts too at the end of the class. Parven and her friends topic was on Pollution and they explained the drastic effects of plastic, paper  usagein a controlled way and the effects of deforestation. Rupali and her friends explained on solar panel usage, how power can be generated from solar source and its uses to mankind. Functioning of heart, types of blood groups and layers of earth were explained in detail by other students with diagram on board.
Block diagram of heart and its detailed explanation
Actually the day started with the inspiration to teach students practically about Computers. We had a practical hands on session using laptops.
Enthusiasm to learn more .


Kids undivided attention on laptop
Pooja revising the topics
They were very excited to know about the basic things like how to turn on PC, MS Word, calculator, home screen icons, wallpaper. In the afternoon session, students startled us with their teaching skills, at the end of the day as a token of appreciation, some gifts were given to students who taught in classes.
Parveen and her team
Gift to the students who taught layers of Earth effectively.
Thanks to all the volunteers wholeheartedly, lets move forward with many more events and workshops which brings out the inner talent of children.

-Divya.

Share