Self Discovery in Primary, April, 2015.

Education is a systematic process through which a child acquires knowledge, experience, skills and attitude. In order to provide a platform of reflective thought, each year, our School starts the academic session with Self Discovery Week. This is an innovative way to build the students' self- esteem as we believe it has a direct, positive influence on the attitude developed and the performance. Identifying and improving a childs sense of identity through how he/she feels about himself/herself is crucial to success. For this, a child must acquire self-esteem, knowledge of his/her strengths and weaknesses. The student must be able to identify what is important to him/her, and what his /her abilities are.

Hence, a variety of activities are conducted to enable students to identify their interests, their likes and dislikes, and to express their views and opinions through planned activities.

The following activities were conducted in the primary classes during the week.

Students of Class 1 drew self-portraits followed by pasting shapes to depict themselves, named their favourite family member and food.

Students of Class 2 drew self-portraits followed by listing five things they like to do and tabulating things they do during the week. They also recorded how their likes differed from their parents.

Students of Class 3 imagined and described themselves as different beings through, I wish I were .., such as a tree, a bird, etc. They described things they like in Hindi and identified who they resembled in their family both by appearance and habits.

Students of Class 4 drew self-portraits followed by listing of their personality traits, their perceptions about themselves and their friends and the good habits they follow. They listed 5 habits they would like to incorporate in their lives in the year to come.

Students of Class 5 shared unforgettable memories from their year in their previous class. They imagined and described their dreams for the future and shared one scientific invention which according to them was of utmost importance.

Self -Discovery activities are fun ways for students to discover new and exciting things about themselves. These activities helped in constructing opinions, paving the way to a process of reflective thought and allowed students to focus on their positive attributes and aspirations. These activities also helped teachers to understand and connect to the new batch of 2015.