Progress in the City schools - First Semester 07-08

Three new city schools join Sikshana

Three schools from the HAL area Vimanapura GHPS, Nellurupuram LPS and Nellurupuram Telgu LPS schools have joined our system of city schools. These schools are adopted in a partnership basis with Broadcom Corporation. This is first such venture for Sikshana where we have allowed joint adoption of a small set of specific schools. 

The team of broadcom employees is highly dedicated to the cause and they are highly active in monitoring the schools. A bi-weekly mentors report is sent to the broadcom employees and they visit the schools every saturday to monitor the progress. 

Summer camps in Sikshana schools
Summer camps were held for three of the six weeks comprising the annual vacation in the following Sikshana schools where Trust teachers have been deployed: Chikkakallsandra, Gubbalala, Arehalli, Vasanthapura, Gowdenpalya and Srinivasa Colony. Interest to attend these camps was running so high that we had to regulate the attendance to a level of 30 kids to a teacher. 

Besides covering subjects like English, Handicrafts and Painting, the teachers concentrated on kids who were significantly lagging behind the class in specific areas. 

Increased emphasis on dictation and writing

One of the programs that have received an increased impetus this year is the dictation and writing drills. Our mentors in the field are highlighting the need to increase the frequency of dictation and also practice writing using library books as reference. Teachers are encouraged to keep a log of dictations they give so that they themselves can rate how well they have been able to focus on this aspect. Also to improve writing skills each student is given 8 sheets of paper. They are encouraged to write at least 2 pages each day and every time they finish a sheet of paper they submit it to the teacher and obtain another blank sheet. More and more schools are now getting on board this program and we hope to report a successful program at the end of the year.

Library - Sapna bookstore expedition

Like last year this year also all the schools in the cluster visited the Sapna book store in Jayanagar, Bangalore in batches of 5 schools. This year also we got some excellent speakers from the art and literary fields who inspired the kids on the need to read especially non-text book material. 

This year since we have an office in kanakapura we have decided to store all the books selected by the teachers in the office as a teacher's library. With each school buying Rs1000 worth of books for the teachers we now have a sizable collection for the teacher's library.

This year we asked the teachers to talk of the importance of return on investment on library books. Once the kids selected the books they sat around with the teachers to reselect them based on the constraint that the budget was Rs1000.  Kids were made aware of difference of cost of paperback vs. hardbound books, etc.

Delhi Trip Quiz

The Delhi trip has gained new level of popularity now. In fact some schools have one of their goals for the year as to get one of their students selected for the trip. 

As before Amruth Foundation was kind enough to conduct a quiz competition on July 25th. This year about 40% of the marks were general knowledge and half of the task

were interactive in nature. One unique test this year was one where students were asked to identify not so common vegetables, fruits, flowers, grains etc. It was a full day session where 102 kids participated and it was conducted in the Rotary Bhavan in Kanakapura.