The Monthly Newsletter
Issue 112 | February, 2015 | www.ei-india.com
MISCONCEPTION Series
? Tackling Maths Anxiety...
ASSET
Educators’ Zone
COVER Story Strategies to Teach Social Responsibility Teaching social responsibility means intentionally teaching young people to understand themselves, each other, and the world. To do this one can create classrooms where students can air and solve conflicts, discuss controversial topics, have a say in what and how one learns, ask questions, engage in dialogue, and be moved to action as a result of their study. Some tips to teach social responsibility: Make Your Classroom More Democratic and Participatory The following questions will help decide how to involve students in the curriculum and in the classroom:
It is human nature to be more invested in something if one has a say in it. We’ve all felt the frustration of watching the same five hands shoot up over and over again in whole class discussions. Think about ways to get more students to participate. Mix up teaching strategies to get more kids to contribute to the conversation: try small groups, pairs, fishbowls, collaborative groups, and micro-labs. Students who are usually quiet in class can sometimes be motivated to participate through activities that involve writing, theatre, or art. Teach Kids to Solve Conflicts
Conflict is a part of life. In fact, conflict often makes life interesting • Can students be allowed to and can lead to greater determine classroom rules/guidelines understanding and deeper and consequences? connections between people. Unfortunately, conflict in schools • How can students share ideas about reading assignments, areas of often causes disharmony, fighting, or even violence. That’s where social study, and homework? and emotional skill-building comes in. • Can some decisions be made by Having these skills will help students consensus? navigate their social world, and help • Can students take turns teaching them do better academically. Begin the class, either individually or in by helping the class develop a sense groups? of community by doing team-building
activities and collectively determining classroom rules. • Teach active listening and practice “I-messages” (saying how you feel rather than blaming the other person) to cut down the number of conflicts.
the day, and will want to discuss them in school. Be both proactive and reactive: Bring up difficult or controversial topics, and also respond to questions.
If students’ questions come up when time is short, acknowledge the • When conflicts arise, use them to question and come back to it later. Let the students know that nothing teach skills and promote healthy is off-limits. relationships. • Help students learn concrete problem-solving and negotiation strategies. Teach them how to stand up for what they need without putting down the other person in the conflict. We call this being “strong” not “mean.” Work towards win-win solutions.
Be sure to keep parents in the loop: Let them know what you’re doing and be sensitive about what topics might relate to the home.
And of course, always consider what’s age appropriate for the students. For example, if third grade students want to discuss a Be aware that sometimes prejudice devastating earthquake that has and stereotyping are the root causes been in the news, focus on the science of earthquakes, how people of conflict. To address this, have helped the victims, and perhaps integrate concepts of diversity and intercultural understanding into the how students themselves could help. High school students can curriculum as much as possible. handle discussions about Address Controversial Issues the death and damage the quake caused. We live in a world filled with controversy. Students are usually passionate about the hot topics of
Source: http://www.teachhub.com/5-strategies-teach-social-responsibility
Student Corner Tackling Maths Anxiety for 23 Years – Is There a Way Out? In my teaching career of almost 23 years, I have often met students who were intrinsically fearful of Maths. The subject terrified them, gave them anxiety attacks and destroyed their self-esteem. This fear seems to be quite widespread in adults too, including parents and teachers. It is a matter of concern that till grade 4, students seem to love and enjoy Maths but as soon as they enter the world of abstract concepts like fractions, decimals, percentages, confusion sets in and they feel more and more helpless in succeeding in the subject. Added to that are incidents of continuous lack of success in solving Maths problems accompanied by poor guidance from teachers and intense competition in a classroom, which actually diminishes the selfconfidence of students. Students with Mathematics anxiety feel negative emotions when engaging in an activity that requires numerical or Maths skills. In one of the studies carried out by researchers, when college students were informed that they would be asked to take a Maths test, it triggered a stress response in students with high maths anxiety. What actually happens when a student is anxious about his performance in Maths is that the emotion of fear impairs logical thinking and problem solving skills. The amygdala which is the emotional centre of the brain, first processes the information when taking in a problem and then prioritizes information going to the prefrontal cortex, which focuses on critical thinking. When a student gets anxious, there is more activity in the amygdala than the prefrontal cortex and
this reduces his ability to remember, analyse and respond accurately. It is almost as if all the brain activity gets centred on worrying instead of cognitive processing. How can we help our children deal with this anxiety and excel in their Mathematical ability? The first step towards this is to help them improve their concentration and focus. Early introduction to Pranayam or simple yoga practices can help students in this direction. Research has proven that regular practice of Transcendental Meditation improves brain functioning and developing a positive attitude towards problem solving. Secondly the pedagogical approaches in Mathematics have to move away from memorizing procedures, rules and routines and focus on conceptual understanding thorough activities and projects. Finding Mathematics
in simple magic tricks can improve students’ interest and focus. Drawing relevance from real life connections is absolutely essential. Students should be taken from simple to complex concepts andencouraged to ask questions. The teachers need to underemphasize mistakes and instead help them learn through their mistakes. Supplying them with correct answers without allowing them to explore is NOT a great practice. Self-introspection skills have to be inculcated enabling students to actually discuss their fears and figure out the causes of their anxiety. Regular practice or rigour is extremely important for constant reinforcement of the concepts and this can be achieved in an engaging way through online interactive Maths programmes like Mindspark. By Ranjani Mitra, Educational Specialist, EI
News Bite ‘Learn to code’ project for school kids in Kerala Thousands of school children across Kerala will be given computer programming kits and trained to write software code under a project designed to create a resource pool of skilled IT professionals and entrepreneurs. Under this project 'Learn to Code' project 2,500 selected students will be given Raspberry Pi computer programming kits and trained by IT experts to write code. The Raspberry Pi distribution is the first such project in India and currently the only state-sponsored programme of its kind in the world. Source: http://www.careerindia.com
MISCONCEPTION Series Reading for Understanding – Grammar
Q
Class 6: English
Which of these is a correct representation of the given sentence in Reported Speech? He peeped out of the window and said, “What a cloudy day!”
No. of Students 7452
A
He peeped out of the window to remark what a cloudy day.
B
He peeped out of the window and exclaimed what a cloudy day.
He peeped out of the window exclaiming what a cloudy day it is.
1 Why was the question asked in ASSET test? Narratives can contain both reported and direct speech. It is vital to be able to switch between the two without gaps in comprehension or errors in the grammar. This question was asked to test whether the students understand the two types of sentences correctly and are able to rewrite one in the other form correctly while keeping the meaning constant.
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What did students answer? The number of students who answered the question was relatively low. Less than a third (about 33%) of the 7452 students chose the right option (C). The majority of the wrong answers were equally distributed between options B & D, 24 & 25%, respectively. Possible reason for choosing A: Almost 15% of the students chose this option, the one with the lowest number of students choosing it. The students, who chose this option, have not recognised that the exclamation mark at the end of the sentence is an indicator that the person exclaimed. A possibility is that students who were unable to figure out the right answer chose this as the option that is most different from the rest (in its choice of verb). Possible reason for choosing B: The students who chose this option (24%) seemed to have recognised that the past tense was the right tense to use. A possible reason for the error might be that the students probably felt it was right to retain the wording of the original sentence. Possible reason for choosing D: This is a common wrong option with about 25% of the students choosing it. “What a cloudy day it is!” is a common way of expressing the same meaning that is expressed by the original sentence. This suggests that the students are unclear about how to transform a sentence from direct speech to indirect speech and merely recognise that a sentence of a different form with the same meaning and more or less the same words’ should be the answer.
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Learnings • The number of students choosing the various options is very similar suggesting that the students are unsure about which the right option is. This indicates confusion about this concept among the students. • The students seem to be confused about whether to retain the wording exactly or not. The usual cases that they encounter probably test them on pronouns or expressions of time (e.g. converting “me” to “him” or “yesterday” to “the previous day”.) This is an unusual sentence and that seems to have confused the students making them unsure about what the subject of the clause needs to be. • The students also seemed to be having trouble with using the right tenses. E.g. Option D can be ruled out easily if one notices that the sentence needs to be “He peeped out of the window exclaiming what a cloudy day it was.”
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B. 24.0%
C. 32.5% P
C He peeped out of the window and exclaimed that it was a cloudy day. P D
A. 14.9% D. 24.6%
Only 32.5% answered correctly
How do we handle this? •
First tell them what verb to use in the reported speech. o If there is an exclamation mark at the end of the sentence, then a good verb to use is “exclaimed”. o If the sentence you need to convert is a question, then a good verb to use is “asked”. If the question is a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question, then use ‘if’ or ‘whether’. E.g. He said, “Do you want tea?”g He asked whether / if I wanted tea. (Draw attention to the punctuation) The same word can be used when the question is a “WH-“ question. E.g.
He said, “What do you want?”g He asked what I wanted. o “said” can be used for a statement. • Explain that when changing exclamations into reported speech one can talk either say that the speaker exclaimed about something or convert the exclamation into a full sentence. E.g. He said, “What a beautiful sight!”
(i) He remarked about the beautiful sight. (ii) He exclaimed that it was a beautiful sight.
Exclamations, in direct speech like the one above, need not always contain a verb. But when we convert them into reported speech, we either mention what the exclamation was about, as in (i) above, or complete the sentence using the word “it” for a subject and a form of the word “be” as the verb. The rules that normally apply for which tense to use apply here – if there is no verb and the tense is not clear, the default option is to use simple past. If the sentence is part of a discourse, then the tense we use will depend on the previous sentences and what tense they are in. • Provide practice converting exclamations to reported speech and vice versa. Here are some ideas for you to try out o One way to teach conversion to indirect speech is to get two students to have a conversation in front of the class and ask the students to write it up in reported speech. o Another idea is to take a few students out one by one and make exclamatory remarks to them. They should then report the remarks to the other students, who will have to guess the remarks. o Ask them to think of their favourite movie dialogues and ask them to write them down in reported speech. (They can translate from other languages if need be). Or give them copies of interviews or famous speeches and ask them to rewrite those in reported speech.
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EDUCATORS’ Zone 2. What is your approach to classroom management and student discipline? Mrs. Amitha K.T., Principal, School Vivekananda, Bangalore
1. Who has most influenced you to become an educator, and how did they influence you? My loving mother was my great motivator to become an educator. She taught us from young on how to make every moment a learning moment. Right from reading magazines and newspaper, (even the ones used for wrapping things) to boiling milk or watering plants was a learning experience. Conceptualizing day-to-day situations was aiding us to internalize the knowledge assimilated thus. She trained us on how to think logically and reason out what after effect would be borne out of performing any task. Eventually she taught us to be good and do well at all times. It also enabled us to build a good value-system within ourselves. This kind of learning attitude in us fascinated our fellow school mates and we had many followers. As we grew up, taking a leadership role in the education field was the best road for us (sisters) in the journey of our life.
Entering the class with a smile and spreading this smile among the students is the best technique for class-room management. Approaching students with respectrespecting his individuality becomes an effective tool. The need to respect may be their ability or inability to do things for various reasons. Understanding their needs with love and care will help us to keep that smile on us always. For this smile, the children would go out of their way to do their best as desired by us. 3. What are your views regarding the ‘Importance of Teacher Training and Development’ in educating Students? When things around us are changing at an astounding rapidity the knowledge explosion too is that much faster. ‘Teacher Training and Development’ will become a dire necessity to keep abreast with the evolution of new knowledge springing up at every breath. Educators should empower themselves to become sensitive to these changes and be able to quickly adapt to new techniques of educating themselves and the people around them.
Fun Zone Do you believe in God?
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Well, I do believe in higher powers...
X X
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