CASW Session-3 Presentation-3

Presenter: Raji Nair
Facilitator: Maheshwaran
Participant: Anitha, Amarnathan, Neela, Mahua, Srinivas

Resources:
- Student work: Test paper which was answered by the child with the teacher support

Strengths of the student:
- Hard working
- open to feedback
- takes care to present work neatly
- Motivated and wants to do well
- Uses any strategy taught willingly

Key questions:
What strategies can I use to make my teaching more effective and to make the student a better learner?


Suggestions given
- Visual & auditory
Since the child is the visual learner I suggested that any experiment conducted
in the class will sure have its own video/animated version of it. She could be
provided with the video and a checklist/worksheet that she could answer while watching the video
- Identify keyword
to identify a keyword in every lesson so that she can remember the task.
- To find out when was it last that the child could infer or make any kind of analysis, and to develop strategies based on the situation.
- build on strengths

Presenter reflection
- Number of pull-out sessions cannot be increased
- Parents do not agree with the learning difficulties of the child
- Keywords are highlighted, but become difficult to remember as the contents become heavier

CASW Session-3 Presentation -1

Presenter-Mr.Amarnathan
Facilitator-Dr.Maheshwaran
Participants- Anitha, Raji Nair, Neela Tatu, Srini, Mahua
Presenter tools- Handout which gives details about objective and learning strategies followed by the language department, A audio tape which consists of oral presentation of grade 6 students-where three students have narrated the story in their own words.


Even before i could attend the CASW session of Mr.Amarnathan i guessed the topic of discussion would surely be related to communication skills of the students in kannada. Nethravathy who is the language teacher has been always sharing thoughts about this topic with me.

Key question: How do we make language learning empirical and relevant to life in the process of developing listening and speaking skills and raise the state of language learning from mere academic survival to a living experience?

Clarifying questions:
-For me the audio appeared like the student was reading the script hence my question was if he had the written document while narrating the story?
-Did the teacher have any talk regarding the importance of language with the parents ?

Strategies built during the participant discussion
-Record when the child interview people like maid, seller, driver etc...
-Photographic story telling: where the students use digital cameras and take some interesting pictures and make a story by giving simple dialogue.
-To invite guest speakers like sports personality to talk in kannada
-To invite people who are from a different nationality and have tried to learn kannada like "Miriam" who came from germany to our school.
-Parents could also share the difficulty faced for not knowing the local language
-To read a paragraph or the news headlines everyday
-Importance to assessment to be given

Presenter Reflection
-Reading newspaper and watching movies is part of regular language activity
-No standardised assess

CASW-Session 2 -Presentation 2
Presenter: Dr.Maheshwaran
Facilitator: Mr.Amarnathan
Participants: Anitha, Srini, Mohua, Neela and Raji

Presenter tools- A ppt presentation of students work and ppt presentation for CASW session, participants were provided with the handout of CASW presentation.

Key questions:
-I am convinced that this work is a benchmark presentation
-would you agree with my conviction? what is your perspective on this?
-could this presentation be considered a benchmark at national/international level?

Mahesh had a strong reason for bringing this piece of work and the key questions to this CASW group
-the CASW group was versatile
-multiple/diverse interests
-strong grounding in thier chosen field
-exponents of modern technology in education/communication

Clarifying questions were:
-Did you find any student work on the net which was considered as national/international level benchmark?
-Did your classes include power point presentation and did your presentations followed the criteria that you listed to the students.

Participant discussion
-The whole group accepted that has the best work as this presentation included all the guidelines given by the teacher. We also felt that the students could do such an excellent piece of work only through some motivation from the teacher. And we were sure that all the students were motivated by the way how Dr.Mahesh created his presentations.
-We also felt that there was need to acknowledge each picture that has been included in the presentation.

Collaborative strategies
-In order to compare this work with other schools/organizations it is very necessay to document the process, including the video recording of the presentations along with ppt file.
-It was also necessary to create benchmarks for different Grade descriptions
-We all felt that the collection of benchmark should start within the department and then proceed with schools and international organizations.

From Dr.Maheshwaran's presentation i'am taking back with me these keywords
-'Emotional Intelligence' -This is one of the assessment criteria listed which talks about given uniterrupted time to the presenter to present.
-'LISTEN, RESPECT AND RESPOND'- includes the seating discpline, how to ensure immediate thinking and question from every participant.

CASW-Session 2 -Presentation 1
Presenter: Mahua Roy
Facilitator: Mr.Amarnathan
Participants: Anitha, Srini, Mahesh, Neela and Raji

Resources used for presentation:
-Student's Work-A 6 piece KG card board sheet with the outline of world map, exploring a route with pop-ups.
- Participants were provided with an handout which included details like the targeted grade, the objective, time taken to complete the activity and details of each blocks work, problems encountered and the key questions.

These were the two important key questions that was placed in front of the group:
-What could have been done differently to get the children to apply principles of art and Design & Technology more effectively?
-Would assessing application of skills have led to more motovation on their part?

Clarifying questions
-Was each member in the group provided with roles?
Response: Mohua wanted students to decide what they would like to do.
-Was there an handout given to the students which spoke about assessment criteria for the art section?
Response: Instructions related to assessment was shared with the students but there was no document that could remind the students again and again

Participation discussion:
Most of us in the group felt it was an excellent activity, there has been lot of planning involved by both the sos teacher and the art teacher. I think it might be the best take back activity for srini who is the geography teacher. Most of us in the group felt that the reason for the incomplete success could be because the activity was stretched for the period of one month, there were many suggestions that was provided by the group like
-Provide assessment criteria
-To teach students to create paper objects that are important for the activity before the activity had started
-Model it with example
-Clear instructions about what is expected
-Physical spacing which could help in efficient monitoring

The collaborative strategies :
-Activity to be more student context oriented
-Emphasize on Assessment criteria
-Precheck on Application of skills
-Physical spacing of students

The whole process took place in a very organized format with everyone having enough time and equal chance for dialogue. Though mohua had lot of take back from this session the only worry she had is how would she implement these strategies now-i.e before April.
It was a great presentation with great piece of work where everyone of us took back some thought- thank you mohua.

Implementation of Ist CASW presentation suggestions

Some of the suggestions that i took back from Ist CASW presentation were
-Assess the process of the presentation
-Provide graphic organizers or worksheets to keep participants engaged
-Questions raised by the audience should carry points
-Provide with key question for the topic before presentation

I have implemented some of the suggestions and that has worked perfectly with other classes, When i brought the problem to the group it referred to grade 9D. But i tried the same with grade 9C. Topic was "Different Types of Software", Students were provided with the same criteria that was given to 9D class. I also looked at the draft and suggested changes in the process of creating the power point presentation.
Participant students were asked to create a mind map which was provided with an outline as follows:

The main idea was-Types of software
This main idea branched out into several types of software
Each type had specification of why we the software for and examples -Given below is the sample of mind map which was converted to a soft copy from an hard copy.

Srini's Presentation

We belong to group 3 -High school section group. Our facilitator for this presentation was Mrs.Dharma Kannan and i'am sure everyone of us know about the organization skills of MsKannan. Tables and chairs were arranged before all the participants arrived. Presentation began exactly at 1.35. Srini walked with a tape recorder and some photocopied papers.

Srini's presentation was about the Ist DOD programme for this academic year 05-06. He had accompanied students of grade 9D to Bandipur-a wild life sanctuary. The students had different activities for 4 different days. On one such Ram and Srini decided to raise some questions related to civic problems. Objective of this discussion was to sensitize students to local concerns in the area of personal development. Students were made to listen to an audio tape where the speaker spoke about some civic problems. with this as a scenario srini posed two key questions to the group

1. How could I carry on with further activity to consolidate learning?
2.Do life skills need to be assessed? Is so, what tools could be used?

We were then given 5 minutes to raise clarifying questions to be more clear about the whole scenario

1. Where was the recording of the tape done? did the students interview/it was a pre planned recording?--Plan was given before recording
2. How was student's reaction during the discussion?- Students were emotionally involved in the discussion
3.What were the activities for three different days- watch wild life, trekking/physical activities/ discussion
4. What was the focus of discussion?-Civic problems

Next was the participant discussion

This session gave lot of inputs to srini to take back to implement for next DOD programme. Mahesh's suggestions were more valid as he deals with a similar subject and he also accompanies the SUPW students where he is more often faces the civic problems and also some of the life skills. Ms.Kannan also facilitated with suggestions on what kind of life skills has to be assessed. The discussion continued as life skills is something that cannot be graded and is a long term process.

some of the suggestions given by the group were to bring a problem to the students and see if it has bought about any changes in the analysis of the problem, To look at current issues for the discussion, To raise key/challenging questions for the topic of discussion, To discuss problems that could have arrised in a place like bandipur(Civic problems), Make students practically see the civic problems and bring about solutions for the same,Blogging, Integrate it with other lessons, and there on.....

CASW Presentation-1
Date of presentation: 18th January 2006
Time of presentation: 3.00 to 4.15
Venue of presentation: Junior computer lab
Facilitator: Mrs.Dharma Kannan
Participants: Amarnathan, Maheshwaran, Neela tatu, Mohua, Raji Nair, Srinivas

Phase -I-presentation
Case i presented was of grade 9D where i tried a new teaching methodology-Teaching by peers to the whole class. This teaching methodology was tried on 17th january 2006. Students were asked to create a presentation a week ago based on the topic "operators" following the guidelines.

Vision: Peer teaching the whole class
Target Class: 9D
Topic: Operators

Guidelines for the designing presentation:
Title slide
List the operator of discussion
List the categories of the operator
Purpose of each operator
Syntax of the operator
A Working program

Rules for presentation
Text should not be more than 3 sentences in a slide
Animation of each text is compulsory

During the presentation
Both the members from group should explain the topic
Both the members in the group should be able to answer any questions related to the topic
Program should be executed
Members of the group can question any participant to make sure that the class has understood the topic of discussion.
Participants should take down the notes while the presentation is happening

Assessment & Feedback
Teacher takes down verbal comments related to presentation
Suggestions/challenge question is given to the group to take back from class and try it.

I had tried this teaching methodology for grade 6. But had failed to achieve a satisfactory understanding for student. After the ppse workshop i felt i should try the same methodology by providing more clear guidelines to the students and i have tried this now. This has given me more satisfaction and now i have brought this to the group in order to gain more inputs with some of my concerns about the proces.
And hence my key questions were:
1. Will this teaching methodology work for any topic?
2. How can i make students/participants be occupied fully during the presentation?


Phase II-clarifying questions:

Following were some of the question posed by the group
1.Where the students given any time to take down notes
2.Was the project taken home to complete
3.Were the students allowed to take the project home to complete
4.Was there any support rendered for understanding the topic


Phase III- Participant discussion:


Participant’s view
Yes this teaching methodology can be applied for any topic
Examine the draft to refine the entire process
Student will be given special time to write down notes
Assess the process of the presentation
Reduce marks of those students who distract the class
Questions raised by the audience should carry points
Provide graphic organizers or worksheets to keep participants engaged.
Provide with key question for the topic before presentation


My reflection
It can work only if students have some basic introduction about the topic
I would like to implement this
I do not agree with this as I feel note taking during the presentation given the picture of immediate understanding
Yes I will follow this
This was tried and did not work
Topic is short and not many question can be raised-but I would like to try
If graphic organizers are given at the beginning it does not give way for learning. Worksheet can be a better option
Yes, would like to frame key questions.

What am I taking back from this presentation?
Assess the process of the presentation
Provide graphic organizers or worksheets to keep participants engaged
Questions raised by the audience should carry points
Provide with key question for the topic before presentation

I still have 5 presentations to happen in the class and I would like to try all of the above suggestions.

Time Line Continued.............

It’s the time when I joined aditi that I had to think about the student’s interest, their level of understanding, their previous knowledge and many more things. As a new teacher to school I was finding difficult to find out these simple things. Actually I joined some time in September, so I had not attended the induction program and hence I did not know any of these words-“Assessment”, “Rubrics”, “Lesson Plan”, “Year Plan”, “Unit Plan”, “PTC’s” and many more…. After the induction program some of the learning methodologies became clear to me. I just had partly started context based learning in the year 2003-2004. Ever since then aditi is helping me to learn more aspects of teaching and learning. Some of the workshops that have helped in build our cognitive thinking are Coverage & Understanding, Assessment, e-portfolio, DPSE module 1, PPSE workshops ….. To be continued until we are part of aditi community.

My time line

I was a student of a state board school. This was a local school which was just on the next street of my house. High school section should prepare students to meet requirements for the pre-university section. Firstly I never read any other books other than text book when it was necessary only. Neither was it a practice at home to read. When I stepped out of school and started my pre-university where I found most girls with novels in their hands reading through the day in college as well while traveling back home. I was wanting to develop this habit but when I read the first book, most words in it where out of my vocabulary, Ever since then I have always been trying to read books which I do it for some days and then I stop it reading more. This has been happening to me right from my pre-university to till this date.

In this workshop I realized that what I learnt in school and pre-university was a content based learning. In my graduation program I chose some subjects that were of my interest like Math and statistics for which I did not depend on my professors for every bit of understanding. I realized that understanding of the content was very much necessary to implement in future. I worked on several projects to understand the practical application which included statistics and math. This was beginning of a contextual learning.

Alongside my graduation I was learning some skills of programming which motivated me to perform Master in computer applications. During this period I was both a teacher as well as a student. My first teaching started in SSI (Software Solutions integrated Limited) a training institute. Here my job was to teach, I never had to find out if the students were really interested to learn the subject as the training was vocational.

It's the time when i joined