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
“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” – Robert Frost
English is used in the world as a lingua franca among people from different cultures, ethnicities, and social backgrounds across the world. As a teacher, guiding students to write effectively, being the major component in teaching English, has always been a herculean and challenging task for me.
Thankfully, there are a plethora of ideas, activities, and tools which can be adopted to improve children’s writing skills. Creating a blended learning environment to teach languages online, often involves utilizing various tools and pedagogical approaches. Teaching online has its own set of challenges and hurdles but with the easily accessible technology, for me, as an English language teacher, it has turned out to be an effortless task. However, using these applications can create technical, administrative, and pedagogical challenges unless the right application is used and the right culture is created in the online classes for students, especially skills that require writing.
Prior to this pandemic, my classroom teaching involved direct teaching, guiding, and encouraging writing skills with the add-ons like Powerpoint presentations and Youtube videos, which played a secondary role in encouraging writing. But during this extraordinary situation of virtual schooling, and the uncertainty looming with regard to offline classes, all these technological sources became the primary source and not just add-ons.
One of the best ways to help children strengthen their English writing is to ensure that they master the art of reading as it is the stepping stone to better writing. Since time immemorial, this is one fruitful skill, which is used in classes across the sphere. Inspired by this. I have been using this technique in my regular classes not only to instill a habit of reading but also to enhance their visual as well as auditory senses and concentrate on the pronunciations, punctuations, literary elements, and devices to increase their ability to understand and reproduce them when penning down their writing assignments.
As online classes are in full swing, using the break-out rooms to have small discussions, supporting peer-review, and giving feedback on their writing skills is another tool which I make use of, to develop confidence and avoid anxiety in children when they are putting words on the paper.
Over and above, introducing new words to build vocabulary, encouraging letter writing, which has become a bit of a lost art, journaling, creating story prompts, stressing the importance of clear, thoughtful writing, assigning brief writing exercises, classroom writing competitions, allowing learner autonomy so as to help students identify the common errors and rectify them and last but not the least is to making writing fun is what I always adopt in my teaching of this language.
Applying and incorporating innovative writing tools and collaborating with other faculty members to integrate and to make writing more effective in their subjects, is an innovative technique which we use in Ekya Byrathi, encouraged by our HOS, so as to build and boost the skill of writing in varied subjects and topics.
We, as adults, and teachers can write to explain and elaborate our ideas through our writing, to the world out there. But a student can take years to develop that skill and it is my earnest desire and aim to help them progress and succeed in this language. Writing is a fine skill and it is an apprehended state of education.
I believe that my students are my vital assets, wanting and waiting to be challenged and encouraged in this online journey. Enabling and equipping them using this online forum to the best of my ability, is my goal.
Students, on the other hand, during the classes are a great help in guiding me when I get stuck and helping me handle any technological hitch that I face. This role reversal does enhance my own learning skills of this virtual world and this also becomes a source of good communication and vocabulary for the students, which boosts my enthusiasm and theirs as well. As the quote goes ‘ A teacher is always a learner’ is so relevant, more so in my case, as it took me a few months to learn and appreciate this virtual teaching and learning.
It is my commitment to teach, advise and apprise students that, it is only when one learns to write, they can fix their official signature. Numerous teaching and learning skills are out there to grasp and there are many that I have to master, but my journey of learning will never cease. Finally, as an English teacher, I can never call it a day as I will continue to learn, develop and motivate myself to impart the writing and reading skills of this amazing language and develop the skill and love for writing in students.
By, Virginia Isaac, IGCSE and Middle School English teacher, Ekya Byrathi
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
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