Time and again teachers and principals at high school have revealed
to us that children especially in government schools fail to understand some
basic concepts taught at primary school level. The reasons are manifold and
there are existing evidences to confirm this. What seems to be working or at
least getting children enthused about studies, is the activity based learning.
We saw in my last post that how delighted the kids were when
movies, videos were projected on big screen which helped them understand some
concepts about water cycle. Couple of days back, we made a visit to Agastya International Foundation’s Science
Lab in Bettadasanapura near Electronic city, Bengaluru. The visit was
facilitated by Mr. Nandeesh from ELCIA
Trust. ELCIA Trust has adopted 19 government schools around Electronic
City. To facilitate better learning for these government school students ELCIA
invited Agastya foundation to set up a science lab. One of the schools’ campus
was identified for setting up this lab.
The science lab is open throughout the day from 10.30 am to
3.30 pm. Two tutors from Agastya conduct daily two sessions for the students of
these 19 government schools. The batches are decided, fixed with consent from
school, the concepts explained as per the standard/grade the students are
studying in. The lab has conceptual models for explaining basics on biology,
chemistry, physics, geography, etc. The models are developed as per the
syllabus for each grade and hence relevant for students to learn and
understand.
The tutor from the lab, Mr. Sunil, said that “if you explain
the concepts in a lighter vein and show children the working principle, then
the difficult concepts become simple and easy to comprehend”. We at Biome hope
to learn from these initiatives and develop some conceptual models for
explaining concepts related to water.
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