Leave of Absence

Fellow SMK volunteers,

I am out of town for a week which incidentally includes two weekends, one on each side of the week :). So, I will not be able to come for classes. Hopefully, I will be back in action on 27th Feb.

Meanwhile, Dale and Amit are going to make sure (a little pressure tactic here) that SMK takes part in the Environmental Awareness Painting competition and WINS. Looking at their paintings last week, I think they are sure to win. If they don't I am going to put it on you two ;)

A little non serious post with uncharacteristic presence of smileys. I think, just the whiff of vacation is enough to have this effect on people. Good luck then.

Re: Fresh Blood in the system

So, we have yet another new volunteer for SMK. At this rate I think we will soon be running a 'fresh blood' bank ;)

Please welcome the latest addition to SMK family - Dale, who was the driving force behind the painting competition that I talked about in my previous entry. We wish her a long and exciting tenure with SMK.

Run up to Painting Competition

YFS is organizing a Bangalore wide painting competition to generate environmental awareness. The idea is to select 5 students from each school and have them participate in an event where all the schools come together. At SMK, we selected a group of 20 students from 5th, 6th and 7th standard and held a drawing competition. The best five will be sent for the final competition. Here is a glimpse of it.

SMK Private School | Jan 23, 2010

Had a small lecture for my previous class. They managed to remember some stuff that I taught but not a lot. Also, they will be moving out of the school after this year. I am planning to take two "gyan" classes for them. I haven't decided on the content but it will be on the lines of building good habits.

Amit did the lecture for 6th standard and had, lets just say an intense experience :)

We are introducing them to Tenses, in more detail now.

Class is getting used to us and I think this is the time when we can get maximum stuff to them before they get bored of us.

SMK Private School | Year 2010 begins

Finally we started the year with a thin strength in the class. Most of the folks were off to their villages owing to Makar Sakranti.

Last time when we were there, school was planning a trip for kids to Wonder la and we asked them to write 10 lines about it. As expected only one guy came back with it, but we made some of them speak about it.

Here is what we covered:
- Tenses
- Verbs
- Rules for present simple
- Identifying present and past tense
- Rules/Exceptions
- Indian Map

Challenges as we see a.k.a. our prime focus areas:
- Getting people to come forward and talk has always been a challenge, so no more harping on it. Good thing is more people are getting comfortable with us and the idea of speaking in general
- Making people stop putting an ing in every verb they use. People are almost forbidden to use it now :)
- Speaking in words and not sentences.

Year 2009 concludes

The school will be closed all the Saturdays until it opens after winter break next year. We will be back to our teaching ways then.

Sampled new classes

Last two weeks we sampled two new classes. We were reaching a point of diminishing marginal returns (I think) with our previous class. We went to 5th and 6th standard and I think our efforts would be much more fruitful there given their lack of exposure. We are currently aiming to be with 6th standard and then keep aside a half hour open slot to go to any other class. Our principal is keen on getting us to every class possible so that nobody feels left out. Now, this is an excellent recommendation and I feel honoured that she sees value in what we are doing.

Let's see how it goes from here. Will keep coming back with any significant updates.