Tuesday, May 27, 2014

I have a dream...

“You have to dream before your dreams can be a reality” – Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam

On a typically wet Bangalore day, in the middle of July, almost eight years back, I was sitting anxiously in the air-conditioned ‘AV room’ – waiting for my FIRST DAY (!!!!) as a ‘PYP Teacher’ to begin. I was told I will be attending a ‘Teaching and Learning in the PYP’ workshop but little did I know that it will be such a jaw-dropping experience! I was not only amazed by the PYP pedagogy, but also by the confidence and charisma with which the facilitators delivered the workshop. That evening, I reached back home and a prompt reply to my mum’s question “How was your first day at work?” was “Mum, I WANT TO BE A WORKSHOP LEADER!!”

Ever since, like bull’s eye, my DREAM was to be able to facilitate an IB Workshop. I did spend my first couple of years just trying to comprehend what the programme was all about and I was extremely fortunate to be guided in the right direction by the likes of Monita Sen and Gayatri Bhasin. Subsequently, I was blessed to work at schools that provided an environment where I could construct my own meaning of the PYP. All the heads of the junior school at the Aga Khan Academy, Hyderabad: Diana Smith, Rima Singh and now Sreelatha Kumar, along with all my peers, were highly motivating and inspirational. Thank you, everyone!!!

Finally, they day I awaited the most arrived last year (and ironically, it was yet again the first day of an academic year!!) when I received an email from the IBO with the subject headline: “Invitation for Workshop Leader and School Visiting Team Member Training”. By the time I finished reading that email, I had already re-lived all those seven years since that mid-July-morning!! I can’t recall the number of times I might have read it – unable to believe that it was really happening – IT WAS REALLY HAPPENING!!!

Three in-school workshops, two regional, and two or three more in the pipeline; sometimes I still pinch myself to believe that my dream is no more a dream - It is reality.


Thursday, December 12, 2013

Twitter: The latest Passion for 5K

If our readers are wondering where we've vanished, the simple answer is that lately our focus has been www.twitter.com

If you're interested in reading what the 5K's are up to in for past few weeks, then checkout the hashtags #g5humanbody, #g5language and #g5maths on twitter. Parents can take their child's help to figure it out.

Maybe we'll use the blog more when we're back from vacation.

Until then, HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!!

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Using Dumb Charades to enhance unit related vocabulary

We played a game or Dumb Charades today; the difference was that the words given were not names of movies, but words related to the unit (design, weather, environment, shapes, money, government laws, culture, etc). There are basically the factors that impact the design and construction of a structure.


Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Contextual writing

The grade 5's were given a few picture books today and were asked to create a house in the setting of the book. They were given a choice to either write a descriptive essay or create a poem. The focus was use of adjectives and other descriptive language (simile, metaphor and personification).




 One group created their own club house; another group created a house in the 'whispering palms'. A third group described the house in an adventure story and the last group used their senses to add information to Abraham Lincoln's childhood home.

Monday, October 21, 2013

Transferring into symbols

We read the book 'The Greedy Triangle' by Marilyn Burns today and the students were asked to turn the story into symbols. This helped them understand the 'shift' between polygons and the revise the vocabulary.