Teacher workshop at INTACH

On 12 October 2019, a workshop titled Integration of Current Affairs and General Awareness with Academic Curriculum was held at INTACH. The resource person was Mr Anansh Prasad, founder of SkillSphere, a Mumbai based company involved in imparting training in educational programmes and online learning resources. Mr Prasad, a gold medalist in Chemical Engineering, is currently pursuing his PhD from Cornell University. He conducts a range of educational programmes for students of classes class 3 to 12. These programmes focus on the development of essential soft skills, life skills and general awareness. SkillSpheres programmes such as Global Jigyasa, Indiation, LEAD and ROOTS have been universally appreciated. Ms Deepa Chugh represented The Indian School at the workshop.

The workshop started with an activity where we were asked to think of any five recent events and discuss them with each other. Later, the audience was divided into groups and was given time to prepare a micro teaching session using various Visible Thinking Routines. It was a very interactive session as we got to know about various ways to introduce current affairs in our classrooms.

The workshop helped us to understand the difference between General Knowledge and General Awareness. Apart from that Microteaching and its application to help us teach Current Affairs in the class, were also explained. The session was made interesting by citing examples for the same.

Visible Thinking Routines wherein 6 most important techniques effective in teaching current affairs were discussed and shared. It was also mentioned how micro teaching could be taken forward. The six routines that were explained were: Hypothetical Situation, Shrinking Circle, I used to know, Now I know, What if, So what and Correlation. All the techniques were explained with the help of examples based on current affairs.

Mr Anansh also shared the names of some important news apps to help one be aware of happenings around the world in order to incorporate the same in classroom teaching. We were informed about The Global Jigyasa Weekly Awareness Quiz, a free online quiz hosted by SkillSphere Education, which provides valuable information on global issues to teachers, students and adults across India on a weekly basis.

As rightly claimed by Mr Anansh, it is important for a child to know the relevance of the news or the information provided because only then will a child show interest. It is important to increase students general knowledge by making it a part of regular classroom teaching and not by making it specific by teaching it as a different subject in a separate period as that would make the knowledge specific and not general.

The workshop ended with an activity where we participated in a quiz based on recent events.

It was a well organised workshop and imparted valuable tips on increasing our students general knowledge.