Differentiation

When I, along with my co-fellow, started teaching our kids in Grade 9, schools had just about restarted after the closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Similar to the experiences of other students and educators, this period was particularly tough as there were multiple things to deal with at the same time increased learning gap, further dip from grade level, reduced attention span, readjusting to the routine of a regular school etc. 

After spending our entire first year understanding each child, their learning styles, and their levels better, we were ready to push ourselves and our students when we entered grade 10. With the board exams less than 10 months away, we focused on prioritising individual student needs. 

We used differentiation as a tool to achieve this goal. Fortunately, with multiple classrooms available in the school, we divided students into different groups based on their learning levels. The pedagogy employed in these groups catered to their needs, the practice work and assessments were also scaffolded and differentiated.

This practice helped us in ensuring that all children were learning at a pace comfortable for them but at the same time making progress.

Regular Saturday Assessments

Giving exams is a skill in itself. To build resilience and conduct frequent formative assessments, we conducted tests across subjects every Saturday. These tests were aligned to the SSC board pattern and each student had dedicated test notebooks for all subjects to track their performance and growth.

Periodic PTMs and Routine Home Visits

One of our biggest partners in this journey have been our parents. Their active engagement not only enhances their child's performance but also contributes to overall well-being and development. This year, one of our priorities was to invest more time towards strengthening this engagement. Periodic parent teacher meetings (both before and after assesments) along with regular community visits have helped us build meaningful connections with the families.

Remedial Classes In and Outside School

Some of our students require extra support beyond the confines of regular school routine. To ensure that we provide them with that support, this year our time also dedicatedly started conducting remedial sessions for students in outdoor spaces during vacations or holidays when access to the classroom was not possible. This helped us really working towards the vision of being there for every child.

Stakeholder Investment

One of our major struggles from Y1 was a difficult relationship with school staff. It had reached a point where we weren’t allowed to come to school for 3 days. 

In our Y2, with a change in the school staff and an opportunity to start fresh we made conscious efforts to ensure that we were able to build strong relationships with our HM and the BMC staff. Including, me teaching a non-TFI 9th Grade class maths admist the approaching board exams of our 10th grade class.  However, these actions were worth the effort as it led to us getting more freedom to do things in the classroom, get more opportunities for students and parents, permissions to conduct remedial classes and be involved in decision making for all grades of secondary wing.

Building Hindi Literacy- consistency while attempting the impossible

There were a lot of students in our class who who were unable to read or write in Hindi. Along with my co-fellow, I started teaching basic Hindi literacy to a small group of students in extra classes after school in June. Soon, that number grew to 15. 

We started from identifying letters and sounds but slowly as a result of consistent efforts, 12 out of those 15 students have managed to pass their Hindi Semester exam! Some have shown tremendous improvement and scored close to 50% in the mid year exam.