School Experience Programme by Shine

Self Appraisal-----Day One

I was happy to get the lesson ‘Green India’ from Std VIII since it was interesting to provide students situations which lead to the inculcation of the value of agriculture. With the help of Social Science teachers I could plan a Teaching Manual. In the TM ample space was provided for Activities and Learning moments suitable for transacting the themes like ‘Agriculture’ and ‘Different Crops.’

While in the class I could receive good responses from students and it made me comfortable with them and the class advanced as planned. I used a chart depicting a poem by Murukan Kattakada portraying the plight of a farmer. Students were asked to read the poem first and to recite rhythmically. They did it well and their music consciousness was amazing. Then I demanded them to shift from aesthetics to ground realities and also asked them to write down on what they really felt about the plight of farmers in our society.I used that day’s Nagaram page of Mathrubhumi daily which had an article on the abuse of farm lands in Ernakulam district.I also used Mathrubhumi Weekly which published articles on the Endosulfan issue.

I was pleased that I could almost do justice to Constructivism and Critical Pedagogy. The teacher also commented positively.

Day 2

I fixed the themes of the second class as Differentiation of Food Crops and Cash Crops, and the price value of crops. First activity was planned on a game mode. Students were placed in two teams, one will tell the name of a food item and the other team will find out the related crop and two students were asked to write the same on the Black Board and finally the class  listed food crops cultivated in our country. But after that activity the class went on with description only and I realized if I had included some more activities it would have been helpful to  create situations for the digestion of the theme ‘pricing of crops’.

(This is only an extract from the month long school experience programme)