Participation and Experimentation Programmes-a workshop for teachers.

On Saturday 21 February, 2015, teachers from the pre-primary and primary departments got an opportunity to enhance their teaching skills through this hands-on workshop aimed at developing interactive and activity-based classrooms.

The expert, Ms. Sonia Relia has over sixteen years of experience in designing activity-based group learning programmes for the pre-school level in both conventional and technologically-advanced classrooms. She has developed a programme called Kino Learn for enabling learning with a change. It is a system that works with low budgets and large groups using simple activity kits. She conducts such workshops in different parts of India.

The workshop focused on providing techniques to make learning interesting and lasting. Ms. Relia on behalf of Oxford University Press demonstrated activities that can be practiced from class nursery through primary to teach, practice and strengthen concepts. We all know that children learn things with repeated instructions and demonstration and through learning by doing. Ms. Relia practically demonstrated a number of activities which help children develop a strong base of concepts. In the course of the workshop, the teachers participated in various fun activities which were age-appropriate for children in the Pre-school and primary years. Some of these were:

Silence Activity - A helpful tool to sensitive children to the importance of silence and to make them aware of sign language.

Theme Boards to develop vocabulary, creative conversation and dialogue.

Digitalization of classrooms -which not only involved using a smart board while teaching, but also training the children to enhance their listening skills and allowing technology to work for the teacher.

Fun rhymes-

• Come for Circle Time .
• If you are happy and you know.

Vocabulary train-

Listen and guess the sound game

Listen to the Sounds of your body

The focus was on learning the 'fun way', using resources developed in class by teachers to teach, play and ensure practice by each child.

My Learning Train", an activity- based primary course book published by Oxford India is a book with resources for students and teachers, we were informed.

A discussion on the various techniques to teach children in a group using child-friendly flash cards and dominos was demonstrated.

An enriching workshop which clearly demonstrated the need for involvement, adaptation and creativity in teaching practice. The recommended book, Learning Train was loaded with teaching resources for students. It clearly demonstrated that classrooms can be fun areas with effective learning concepts .

Since only 2 teachers in the primary section could attend the workshop, the workshop was conducted again by some of the participants for the entire Primary section on 25 February, 2015.

Report by Ms. Neha Arora.