Progress in the Kanakapura schools - Second Cluster

HM's meet and a new challenge

The 2007-08 school year started off with an all HM's meet with the program director in the second week of June. Last year's school expenses item heads was reviewed and suggestions were taken. The unanimous opinion was that the spot prizes were having a huge impact in motivating the students and they indicated that the program be continued and if possible the budget also increased for that item head. Majority of the schools found that the percent allocation per item head was appropriate.

One of the items that came out of this meet was that the HM's wanted to take up a new challenge where five students each from class 6 and 7 who scored the

lowest in the previous academic exam were identified and put under charge of two teachers. On Sep 12th a prelim exam was conducted for these students. Another exam will be conducted in Feb '08 for the same set of students and the teacher-student unit that shows the best improvement will be rewarded.

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.

Followup TQM program

After a very successful TQM program last year, a follow-up program was conducted on Aug 11th. That day being a sunday and a festival day the teachers did not disappoint us with an almost 100% attendance.

 The teachers were asked to come prepared with the goal they set for themselves in the previous session, the success or failure in reaching those goals and reasons why. The session was highly interactive and there was so much enthusiasm among the teachers it easily exceeded the scheduled time and finally was forced to stop due to time constraints of the support staff. A couple of members of the board also attended the meet to gauge the effectiveness of such programs and the conclusion was that such programs are very much worthwhile.

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.