ASSETScope - December 2006

Teacher Effectiveness and Improvement Programme

Long term programmes help schools achieve systemic change, increase teacher capacities and enable step-change improvements in learner outcomes. Educational Initiatives partnered with Little Angels on a long-term project to help the school achieve its goals through a Whole School Transformation (WST) Programme. The aim has been to provide transitional support required to build teacher skills, to ensure the effective use of teaching learning materials, the adoption of new processes and technologies and translate these strategies into operational plans.

The Little Angels English Medium School, Pondicherry is a medium sized school with a big vision. Started in 1997, as a Pre-Kindergarten School, it has today grown up to Class 7 with strength of over 400 students. The dream of the School is to help create “intelligent and spontaneous” human beings who are engaged with the world they are in, and contribute in their unique ways.

As a part of the Whole School Transformation, EI completed the Teacher Effectiveness and Improvement Programme with the teachers. Major activities that were focused were Classroom Observations, Teacher Interactions with Subject Experts about the observations done / their performance in the class, analysis of the school’s curriculum plans, assessment plan, student notebooks, teacher lesson plans and question papers.

The major findings of the programme were that Little Angels students are extremely enthusiastic and show a high inclination towards learning new things. They have lot of innovative ideas to help improve the teaching learning in the school. A good rapport is seen between the students and teachers. Teachers are very warm and cordial. Teachers could try to make the class student centric by involving them more. This could be done by having more activities, using some teaching aids, asking critical thinking questions etc. There is high level of comfort between the management and teachers. Teachers exude a lot of enthusiasm and commitment in improving the standard of education amongst their students.

This programme helped the EI team get a feel of what was happening at the school, develop a better understanding of various concerns and inform decisions about how to address them. EI gained a good understanding of the school in order to help improve student achievement.

A tangible change is now seen in the learning outcomes across the school with the active involvement of the Heads and Teachers in the transformation efforts. Each one now understands the need for change and actively participates in the creation of solutions to the concerns. They have gone through a transition process to move from the current situation to the vision of the future; from development of a shared understanding and vision to institutionalization of new ways of doing things in Curriculum revamp and other Teacher Development activities. For Further details write to urmila@ei-india.com.

Schools need to note that ASSET has a strict no-cash collection policy so please do not hand over CASH to anyone representing ASSET. ASSET / EI WILL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY CASH PAYMENTS MADE BY SCHOOLS. If you have handed over cash to any person and still have not received question papers for the WINTER Round please email us at info@ei-india.com or call Sudhir Ghodke at 93270 31105.

Newsbite

• Now ‘Jaadu ki Jhappi’ in schools
• Bharti plans primary schools in 1,000 villages
• NCERT’s Source Book for student’s assessment
• Rs 4,500 cr fund set up for Sikh education

Now ‘Jaadu ki Jhappi’ in schools

Concerned about the rising number of depression and suicide cases among school going children, Delhi State Education Board(DSEB)has decided to take a cue from Sanjay Dutt- starrer ‘Munnabhai MBBS’ and making ‘jhappi’ (hug) mandatory for all students in the schools run by it. The ‘jhappi’ for keeping stress at bay would be between students. Even a teacher can give a ‘jhappi’ to a student. A good hug, according to state education board, will instill in the students, a feeling of being important.

Bharti plans primary schools in 1,000 villages

Telecom major Bharti Enterprises plans to set up 1,000 village schools for underprivileged children to catch them at a young age and steer them towards vocational training. Fifteen such schools are already operational in Ludhiana, Punjab. By the beginning of the next academic session in April, 100 schools would have been made operational in Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

NCERT’s Source Book for student’s assessment

The National Council of Educational Research and Training has decided to introduce a Source Book that will explain to the teachers how to assess the student’s scholastic achievements as well as creative skills. It will tell teachers how to assess a child in the classroom in a manner which takes care of not just how he performs in mathematics and languages, but also arts, music and craft. To prepare the book, NCERT is organizing two day workshop. Ms. Suchi Srinivas is the member of Maths group, NCERT.

Rs 4,500 cr fund set up for Sikh education

The International Sikh Confederation instituted an education fund worth Rs 4,500 crore to impart the Sikh youth with best education. A resolution in this regard was moved by Dr S.S.Johl, former Vice-Chancellor of the Punjabi University and an eminent agro-economist. Money from the fund would be utilised to give scholarships, incentives and other necessary support to Sikh youth to improve their education standards and make them fit for employment in the national and international companies.

WIPRO Launches Education Fellowship

As part of Wipro Applying Thought in Schools, Wipro is launching an Education Fellowship in partnership with Azim Premji Foundation. Through this fellowship researchers will get opportunities to work in the area of education reform. This fellowship will help further the cause of good education and also provide a channel for motivated and talented individuals to work in the area of education.

Senior research fellows will receive a stipend of Rs. 30,000/- per month. Junior fellows will receive Rs. 20,000/- per month. Fellowship duration is 18 months. Write to Wipro at applying.thought@wipro.com by 15th January 2007 for details

Teacher’s Bite

Mrs. Chandra Nagarajan, Vice Principal, Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan Senior
Secondary School, Chennai.

Education system in India
With India emerging as the IT destination of the world, there seems to be a lot of brouhaha over our educational system. The relevance, content and execution of education have all come into the limelight .The need of the hour is more ‘choice’ and encouragement to ‘choose’. If our children are nudged towards ‘Quality Education”, there is no doubt that India will emerge as a true knowledge super power. Education must become an effective instrument of economic development and social change. Education must be able to produce an army of skilled personnel with social sensitivity that will address itself to the problems of the society with a sense of commitment.

Importance of teacher training and development in educating students
In the given context, it is important that the teacher is equipped and motivated for the central role that he/she is expected to play in the educational system. Teachers need to update their knowledge and skills as the school curriculum and technologies change. Teacher Training at all levels needs to be encouraged, from in-house teachers training, subject based training, classroom based research to pre-designed training programmes.

ASSET
What children learn and how learning has taken place, are critical questions for educators. Here in comes the role of Standardized tests. Testing for the purpose of determining if a student understands and has learned the concept being taught is important. ASSET tests have provided a challenging perspective to the nature of teaching and learning in the school. It has helped the school to identify areas that need improvement. However it is not only important to encourage students to respond to simple test questions, it is essential to help them think critically and apply their learning to new circumstances. ASSET tries to fulfill this function, understanding, application and thinking skills.

TISS Announces MA in Education

Tata Institute of Social Science announces its new MA Education (Elementary) programme, with a special focus on elementary education. The programme has been developed collaboratively along with the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore; Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Mumbai; Digantar, Jaipur; Vidya Bhawan Society, Udaipur and Eklavya, Madhya Pradesh in response to a felt need for more professional development in elementary education.

The programme will commence on May 14, 2007. Application forms and more details can be obtained from the TISS website www.tiss.edu. Last date for receiving filled-in application forms is December 29, 2006. The date of submission of application form has been extended to January 4, 2007 for applicants residing in the remote regions of India or foreign countries.

Humour

Teacher : How can you prove the earth is round?
Student: I can’t. Besides, I never said it was.

How do children learn?

The ASSET team is constantly analysing the test data collected over the years and trying to understand “How do children learn?” An ASSET question is like a window into the child’s mind. Each option is designed to check for specific misconceptions or common errors that a child might have.

By analysing the specific wrong option chosen by the student we can deduce the kind of misconception that exists. There are some questions that show a clear misconception across the nation. To further understand the child’s thought process while answering the question, we decided to go back to the students and discuss the misconception with students.
One such discussion was carried out at with the Class 5 students of Zydus School of Excellence, Ahmedabad. A set of Maths and Science questions from Class 4 to 6 were selected. In all these questions, a majority of students had chosen a specific wrong option. The discussions were conducted to know the reasons why Children chose a particular option and threw up several insights about how children think:

Consider the following example:

A. 74

D. 47
Most of the students answered B. A girl was asked to explain. She said that there is ‘ 100 - and 40 is written, so answer must be 60. But she wondered why there was no “ = “ sign. She recognized the ‘ > ‘ sign as the one used to show which number is bigger. She reasoned that since 60 is bigger than 40 the answer is correct.
The learning from the question is that while students know the “>” sign, they associate it only to the numbers on the either side of the sign and not to the operations on either side.

The interactions gave us an opportunity to understand how different children think about a particular problem. The most important aspect of this activity was that while solving the questions with their peers, students were able to understand why they were making a mistake. Schools can help improve student learning by doing this activity in their classes.