'Joy of Learning' - Primary Class Project

The scope of the project includes

• Support Government primary school children and teachers
• Conduct Anubhava Facilitator Training Sessions for teachers of 3rd to 7th class
• Implement Anubhava Learning Sessions for Children through trained teachers
• Provide required materials support
• Conduct Science Exhibition by children
• Set up Science Resource centre at every school

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 creative worksheets.

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. This project is implemented for 7th class children in 3 government schools that includes Bellandur, Sorahunse and Doddakanneli. Intel supported with funds and volunteers to execute this project at Bellandur school.

Some of the salient features of the project are

• Anubhava learning sessions are held once a week in the classroom. 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.
• 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.