Learning at Ekya
“Education is not the learning of facts but training the mind to think”
~Albert Einstein
At Ekya, we believe that learning is a lifelong journey and knowing how to learn is a skill in itself. Our learning process focuses on creating lifelong learners with the means to adapt and thrive in a constantly changing world.
Learning as a goal is truly achieved only when students are able to transfer their learnings to new situations. To enable this, at Ekya, we provide opportunities for students to nurture their curiosity, present ideas, explore authentic tasks such as engineering and design challenges and research reports.
Have you ever wondered why the sky is blue? Are there more than 118 elements? Why did dinosaurs become extinct? The curiosity that lies behind these questions and the drive to find the answers is what learning Science is all about. Physics is one of the most fundamental scientific disciplines and its main goal is to understand how the universe works. Studying physics develops critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
At Ekya, the students delve into the world of Physics through problem-solving tasks using light and sound, experiments with force and motion in the primary grades to tasks such as the Reverse Engineering project, Air Bag Challenge, and Hybrid Vehicle Design Challenge in the senior grades. These tasks help the students to engage with real-world applications. Students engage with the scientific content through strategies such as scientific sketching, CER – Claim Evidence Reasoning framework, IIC – Identify, interpret and Conclude, etc. Teamwork, empathy, and reflecting on their own learnings play key roles in this process.
The culture at Ekya promotes collaboration, cohesive interaction, and a safe space for students to voice their thoughts and queries. Teachers are trained to appreciate and acknowledge every student and gradually help them expand their boundaries. Every student has their own pace when it comes to learning. Teachers play an important role in levelling this learning graph by helping those who need extra care and providing hands-on sessions whenever necessary. Culture routines like affirmations, good things, centering, and reflections induce value and empathy in the classrooms.
The objective for every stakeholder at Ekya is the success of students. Our learning and culture practices, processes, and pedagogies allow students to achieve their goals, make a difference and be future ready.
By, Komathi K, Physics Curriculum Designer, Ekya – CMR K 12 Schools
Writing is an effective way to express your feelings, thoughts, and ideas. As teachers, it is our responsibility to help students enhance their reading and writing skills. Keeping this in mind, we at Ekya School, Byrathi have introduced some exercises to improve and develop the creative writing skills of our students. These writing exercises not only help students improve their writing skills but also give them an opportunity to showcase their creativity. The way students think, their understanding of a topic or a concept, their perception, all this reflects in their writing. But sometimes they are not able to express themselves on a piece of paper. That’s why we have to encourage our students to practice reading & writing. Writing doesn’t have to be an essay or a big paragraph, even 3-5 lines can help a child improve his writing skills. This doesn’t happen immediately but it is a gradual process. I encourage my students to read a lot in Hindi, which will help improve their vocabulary and help in enhancing their writing.
I am a Hindi Teacher and teach grades 5-9. In my classroom, I use various tools to improve my students’ writing skills. Tools that involve writing are immensely helpful. I try to assign brief writing exercises to my class. For example, in Grade 5, I used a tool popularly known as ‘K-W-L’. This tool requires the students to write what they know about a topic, what they want to know, and what they learned and my grade 5 students enjoyed doing this activity. It was not a lengthy piece of writing but only a few sentences. There are other tools too, like 3-2-1, that can involve writing.
Once I asked my students to imagine that they have won a lottery of Rs. 10,000/- and I asked them what they would do with the lottery money? Some wrote that they will buy things for themselves while the others wrote that they would donate that money to an orphanage. Well, a few of them wrote that they would give it to their parents. Students enjoyed writing down their ideas. The students felt happy as they were imagining winning a lottery, which helped them to write those wonderful answers with so much enthusiasm.
I did this same activity in Grade 9. One wrote that he would organize a music concert, while the other child wrote that he was saving the money for his college education. Another student wrote that they would invest the money for the future, while yet another child wrote that she would use it to travel.
In grade 8, we read a story and understood what it was about, then I asked students what was ‘the one thing’ in the story that they would want to change. After the discussion, I asked them to write this down. We called this writing activity - Twist in a tale! The students enjoyed doing it and then peer-reviewing it. I ask my students to analyze each other’s work in class. This helps students to know that they have to write in order to think more clearly. It improves their basic writing skills.
‘Headlines’ is another writing exercise students enjoy. It can be used for any topic. Another example of writing exercises is - Photographic Writing prompts. We also conduct writing competitions in Hindi. In June 2021, we conducted a Vocabulary Competition where all students made sentences with the new Hindi words shared with them. Though writing requires a lot of patience and time these writing activities and competitions are a great way to encourage our students and build their confidence in their writing skills.
By, Richa Saxena, IGCSE and Middle School Hindi teacher, Ekya School Byrathi
Alone in a crowd
Yet another sting travelled down my skin as the little wind left tried to caress it. Flies buzzing through every little inch of the rotten icing. My own little world, shrinking; minute by minute, boiling down to absolutely nothing. Maneuvering midst the amplitudes of the multiple voices circling around my head, somehow still drowning in the extensive sea of commotion. My soul, trapped between inconspicuous fences much like Schrödinger's cat; with no escape. Isolated, stood my mind despite the clattering of the millions of feet, begging to voice out their opinions. Diverse emotions: panic, rage, frustration, delight, joy, hopping off and onto each being. Thoughts evaporating out of my compact skull obliviating into thin air as still, I sat there, alone. Almost as if there was an invisible shield around me making everything drift further apart from me. Getting rid of the maze of my reflection to keep me company. Loneliness initiated it's way back to me. Still, I sat there.
Knee deep in clouds of mellow whispers assorted with laughs and giggles. A small silhouette toppled towards me, taking up the last seven inches of the squeaky, broken bench made of soaked wood. From making not a single sound, to gently whispering a barely audible ‘‘hi’’, as I blinked the faint figure away. It was funny how my brain created the most wondrous things at the most unnecessary times, kind of like having its own mechanism of eradicating traces of agony from the feeling of abandonment. ‘You can be in a room full of people and still feel lonelier than you would when you're actually alone,’ the words outlined my head as, still, I sat there. Alone in a crowd, hoping she would come back today if not yesterday or the day before that.
Remembering me and the small basket of vegetables we’d picked out for Friday night’s supper; although we might’ve needed some more tomatoes, with time, these ones went bad.
By, Sanika Chakravarthy, Grade 10 - IGCSE, Ekya School, JP Nagar
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