The school year ends with Reading Week across all grades in the second week of February. This is meant to be a showcase of the reading achievements each student has made over the year and a celebration of the reading process. A range of reading and writing activities make up the week. Learning is made visible through the different student displays all over the school, and literary activities. A variety of fun activities planned across grades included Bookmarks, Picture Book Making, Story Cube, Acrostic Poems, Advertisement for a product with a jungle, Autobiography of a thing, Comic strip, Act it out and cover page to name a few.
Mystery Readers –
A surprise guest visits students to read out a story to them in their classrooms. Parents can volunteer themselves or recommend a grandparent, family friend, or neighbor to do the reading with students. They can read a book/a story they were particularly fond of as children themselves. In addition, they’ll answer questions from students on their favorite books how reading has helped them, and how they find time to read as adults.
Stop Drop Read – SDR
A daily SDR program gives students twenty minutes a day to drop everything they’re doing and read anything of their choice. When students have finished a book, they share their reflections with their teacher, thus receiving the support for further explorations. Students will choose from the books in the library. They’ll be allowed an additional 5 -10 minutes to maintain a reading log in which will reflect the students’ thoughts and feelings as they read the literature.
With the will and desire to make a difference in the world today, over 800 students from our schools came together to show how they can ‘Make Bengaluru lead a healthier lifestyle.’ This year, our students at Ekya School BTM Layout, JP Nagar and ITPL have been actively working on the challenge by using the Design Thinking process to understand the ‘why’ of learning.
The Ekya Design Challenge 2020
With the challenge at hand, our students collectively started the first step in defining the problem. Brainstorming saw our students start putting their minds together for the second phase, to discover and define the obstacle, which got them closer to solving the problem. Being empathic is at the heart of the design thinking process at Ekya. It encourages students to put themselves in someone else’s shoes and speak with stakeholders who are affected by this problem. Our students also met and spoke with experts from the health sector where they learned the art of asking questions at an interview and planning on how to conduct these interviews. The focus is on teaching students how to share their ideas and capture feedback.
In the next stage, all students started to test their solutions with users. This stage helped determine if the prototype solves the user’s problem. If it doesn't, it’s not a failure. Students will use feedback from the users, and more research about the viability of their solutions and turn this into an opportunity to make the solutions more workable. This helped them identify patterns and needs of people with regard to living healthier lifestyles. The exciting stage, 'prototyping' gave students the ability to design the solution and put it in practice for the world to see.
The Ekya Design Challenge 2020 was the perfect platform for our students to share their process, their ideas and their journey with an audience at the Bengaluru International Centre on 18 January 2020. To inaugurate this event along with our students, we had the distinguished presence of Mr. Ramachandran, Mission Director. National Health Mission, Mr. K.C Ramamurthy, Chairman, CMR Group of Institutions and Dr. Sabitha Ramamurthy, President, CMR Jnanadhara Trust, Chancellor, CMR University, and Dr. Tristha Ramamurthy, Founder, Ekya Schools.
Our student’s designs for solutions raised lots of eyebrows for the uniqueness and dexterity. A sight gadget for the elderly, an app on bullying and adopting a child and a bangle that can enable women safety and a drone to monitor garbage were some of the standout solutions created by our students.
With the zeal and purpose to find decisive solutions, our students' prototypes were put on display for parents, visitors and other experts to witness how they presented their ideas on solutions to make Bengaluru a healthier place to live in. This whole challenge led our students to understand new methods of learning, sharing ideas and collaboration and building positive energy to help them develop qualities of great thinkers and innovators.
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