The scope of the project includes

• Conduct Anubhava Facilitator Learning Sessions for teachers of 3rd, 4th and 5th class
• Implement Anubhava Learning Sessions for Children through trained teachers
• Support Government primary school children and teachers
• Provide required materials support

Anubhava learning sessions are designed for various science lessons in the Karnataka state syllabus. The learning sessions involve several teaching approaches that are outlined in the Anubhava methodology. Thus, the sessions contain experiments that help children undergo experiences, an approach to facilitate children to ask several questions and go through the experience of self discovery of fundamentals of science and finally express observations, learning etc. through oral and written channels.

Some of the salient features of the project are

• A lesson in the text book may require 3-4 one hour sessions. These Anubhava learning sessions are held once a week.
• Before the sessions are held in the classroom, the teachers undergo training. Thus there is training approximately every month. The scope of training includes all the Anubhava sessions for a particular lesson.
• Each session is designed to address a particular fundamental science concept in the lesson. Sometimes there are additional concepts introduced to enable children learn incrementally and logically; each concept being a building block.
• The sessions have activities, narrations, questions to draw child's attention to every step in the process.
• Materials that are used for the experiments are mostly what a child is familiar with or something that a child can relate to.
• Children are helped to find the reasoning behind the type of materials used, the way they are used and the procedure that is followed. For e.g. In an experiment to illustrate "Air expands when heated", a tube is inserted in a plastic bottle and is made air tight. The bottle is placed in a transparent bowl containing hot water. The other end of the tube is placed in a transparent mug containing cold water. Children's attention is drawn towards a) why one end of the tube is inserted in cold water? b) why a transparent mug is used? c) why the bottle is made air tight? d) what happens if the bottle is kept in cold water instead of hot water?
• Worksheets are designed to reinforce learning. The worksheet contains simple activities such as marking the statements as True or False, finding right answers from a list of statements etc. These statements reinforce the concepts that they have experienced in these sessions.
• Repetition of fundamental concepts is consciously done through a variety of methods - performing an experiment, offering an explanation, exploratory discussions, and application of concepts in daily life scenarios, worksheets, drawing, and a brief revision in the subsequent sessions.

MOU is signed with Department of Public Instructions, Government of Karnataka to implement this program in 196 Government Primary Schools of South Block 4 of Bangalore. As a part of phase one, the project is initiated in 5 schools of South Block 4 for 3rd class teachers and children that includes Bellandur, Doddakanneli, Devarabisanahalli, Sorahunse, Kaikondrahalli. The sessions conducted by the teachers in these schools are observed by the members of ASF.

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A felicitous environment that guides the children and offers them the means to exercise their own faculties permits the teacher to absent herself temporarily. The creation of such an environment is already the realization of great progress - Dr. Maria Montessori

Anubhava Science Resource Centre has been conceptualised with the aim to provide an experiential learning environment for children in the field of science and to promote rich learning experiences. The centre is set up on Sarjapur Outer Ring Road, Bangalore and is offering after-school science learning programs. This facility provides a well designed environment for children to conduct science experiments, engage in discussions and record observations thereby providing a unique opportunity to learn through experiences. The program focuses on helping the child to develop an attitude to think and explore along with offering fundamental science concepts.

The centre caters to children in the age group 5-12 yrs with two different programs based on the age group. The experiments are designed based on concepts in various science topics. For each identified concept, there are multiple experiments. For children below 8 years, sessions are conducted similar to the sessions in 'Joy of Learning'. The children aged 8 years and above are given the freedom to choose an experiment, follow instructions, perform and record observations. A facilitator will help children in understanding science behind these experiments by triggering questions. The experiments are arranged based on the topic and children can work with any experiment based on the topic of his/her choice.
For e.g. Ram enters the centre saying "I got the reason why it happens...". He chooses another experiment and says "last time I saw one girl was getting confused while doing this experiment." Ram headed towards the "dancing moth balls" experiment. He wondered why the moth ball that went up sank and came up again! These questions probably bothered Ram and made him choose this experiment when he came to the centre.

The learning environment, methods and materials together contribute to the learning experiences thereby helping to stimulate the children to appreciate the natural phenomena in each of their experiences.

The environment is geared to the needs of individual learning at his/her own pace without any scope for peer pressure. The environment provides an opportunity to explore by giving children the space and freedom under guidance. For e.g. Somu repeats the same experiment a number of times. He was not bored of repeatedly boiling the water in a test tube and inverting it in a beaker with water to figure out how water was re-entering the test tube. He reached a stage when he realized that he internalized enough and was completely open to an external explanation. On hearing the explanation, there was a big smile on his face indicating the sense of satisfaction in learning and articulating what he was looking for.

The environment at Anubhava endeavors to nurture the capacity for inquiry. The inquiry-based learning is based on asking questions guiding the children in finding the answers themselves and encouraging them to ask new questions along the way. Through inquiry children develop important skills such as careful observation, reasoning, critical thinking, and the ability to justify the existing knowledge.

We believe that the experience at Anubhava helps children to reach the state of inquiry. The facilitators at Anubhava help them to arrive at answers or provide them a direction to think further.

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The scope of the project includes

• Provide curriculum based educational resources for both teachers and students
• Regular discussions with teachers on the resources provided
• Support Government school higher primary teachers and students

The science text books suggest that the teacher carry out a variety of activities to teach a particular lesson. It is quite tragic to note that teachers using activities to teach science is either rare or completely absent. The teachers face several challenges in preparing themselves for activities based teaching approach. We need to acknowledge them. A few of their issues could be, a) there is not enough time to think about the activities, b) even if they find time, they may not be confident enough to carry out the activity or they may carry the fear of an experiment failing, c) the activities given in the text book are usually one-liners, the teacher has to use his/her creativity and innovation to develop this one-liner into a full fledged activity, d) there may be budgetary constraints etc.

With these issues that the teacher faces, we have designed this project, which focuses on creation of high quality supporting materials in the form of booklets, worksheets, 'do it yourself' activities. The resources are created by a very senior educationist.

The project involves design and creation of resources, teacher training workshops on a quarterly basis and monthly interactions with these teachers. The material required for 'do it yourself' or other experiments in this project is provided to the teachers during training.

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The scope of the project includes

• Conduct Anubhava Facilitator Learning Session program to facilitators of tent school children
• Benefit children of migrant labourers through this program
• Provide material support

This project is intended to provide an opportunity of experiencing Anubhava Science Learning sessions to children of tent schools. Anubhava Science Foundation intends to conduct Anubhava facilitator training program to the facilitators of tent schools on a regular basis. The project would also require providing material support to each of the tent schools that is required to conduct Anubhva Science Learning Sessions.

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The scope of the project includes

• Provide material support and technical guidance to perform experiments, activities and design models
• Government School children of 6th and 7th classes
• Organise school science exhibition that provides children an opportunity to demonstrate their work

Science teaching and laboratory go hand-in-hand. However it is not practical for any institution to let children use a laboratory without someone supervising them. There are several experiments that are risky.

Children are devoid of excitement in science learning if they are not "hands-on". There is a need to create opportunities for children in schools to create science materials on their own. These opportunities have to be carefully chosen by experts and the materials used have to be easily available and inexpensive, such that even if the children break them, they can be easily rebuilt.

This project is intended for the students of upper primary class (6th, 7th). They create various resources based either on their own class syllabus or even lower class syllabus.

Towards the implementation of this project, ASF provides the children (or school) with a set of instructions for each activity and also the materials required. Regular interactive sessions are held between the members of ASF and the children to discuss the progress and difficulties.

The school is encouraged to organize a science exhibition giving an opportunity for many more children to learn informally on various topics through resources that would be created and exhibited in this project.

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