Learn English to succeed in modern world

Thrissur, Mar 31 (PTI) Strongly favouring the learning of English to succeed in the modern world, Union Minister of State for HRD Sashi Tharoor has said denial of opportunity to children to study the language would destroy their future.

If Keralites want to succeed in the modern world of liberalisation and globalisation, they should learn English well, he told a two-day international conference on "Curricular Reforms and Class Room Practices in English".

Unaided Private Schools of Rajasthan v. Union of India

Thus, by virtue of S. 12(1)(c) r/w Ss. 2(n)(iii) & (iv) of RTE Act, 2009, the State while granting recognition to private unaided non-minority schools may specify permissible percentage of seats to be earmarked for children who may not be in a position to pay their fees or charges -... this judgment would operate prospectively from academic year 2012-2013 - Hence, admissions given by unaided minority schools prior to pronouncement of this judgment shall not be reopened - Further held (per majority), RTE Act, 2009 is applicable only to day scholars, if any, in boarding schools and orphanages and not to the boarders -...RTE Act, 2009 can be enforced against all types of schools under S. 2(n) except unaided schools (whether non-minority or minority)
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RTE Updates

the PRS Blog » RTE
Latest in the string of litigations filed after the enactment of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE Act), the Delhi High Court ruled that the Act shall not apply to nursery admissions in unaided private schools for the unreserved category of students.  The decision, given on February 19, was in response to writ petitions filed by Social Jurist, a civil rights group and the Delhi Commission for the Protection of Child Rights. 

RTE at Three – Making Learning the Priority

Issued to create awareness and build public opinion please by:

Absolute Return for Kids (ARK), Amitav Virmani

Accountability Initiative, Yamini Aiyar

Akanksha Foundation, Vandana Goyal

Akshara Foundation, Ashok Kamath

Central Square Foundation, Ashish Dhawan

Centre for Civil Society, Parth Shah

Educational Initiatives (EI), Sridhar Rajagopalan

Omidyar Networks, Jayant Sinha

Pratham Books

New Delhi, March 26, 2013: Three years since the passage of the Right of Children for Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE), an ever increasing number of children have access to education.  Yet, a large and growing amount of data points to the fact that student learning levels are unacceptably low, and that improving schooling inputs have had a very limited impact on improving learning outcomes.  Thus, the RTE’s focus on inputs to education rather than on learning outcomes of students may ensure that children are in school, but is unlikely to result in them getting a meaningful education.

With RTE’s enforcement deadline expiring on March 31, 2013, we would like to raise some core concerns around the Act’s enforcement so far and share some possible solutions:

1. There is still no focus on learning outcomes in the RTE: In recent speeches our Honorable Ministers of MHRD have acknowledged the need to shift the focus to quality of education.  However, the effort to provide a free and compulsory education that is also of high quality requires learning outcomes to be at the centre of every policy for real results.  We, representatives of civil society organizations committed to children’s right to quality education, therefore call upon the Centre and State Governments to view RTE’s enforcement through a lens of learning outcomes, and make it a fundamental goal to ensure that all children in India reach well specified learning goals over the next five years.

Education Development Center | Learning transforms lives.

Education Development Center | Learning transforms lives.:

'via Blog this'
EDC is a global nonprofit organization that designs, delivers and evaluates innovative programs to address some of the world’s most urgent challenges in education, health, and economic development. Working with public-sector and private partners, we harness the power of people and systems to improve education, health promotion and care, workforce preparation, communications technologies, and civic engagement.

EDC’s Learning and Teaching Division produces resources in the form of reports, books, Web-based tools, and multimedia for stakeholders across the education continuum. Some of these resources are developed exclusively by EDC while others are the result of collaborations with federal and state government, universities, foundations, and other funders. To browse a larger historical archive of LTD publications, search the EDC

Website: http://www.edc.org/publications

Link shared courtesy Barabara Powell

BBC - Schools: Educational resources from the BBC

BBC - Schools: Educational resources from the BBC:

'via Blog this'

Class Clips

More than 9,000 video clips from BBC programmes on Learning Zone Class Clips ready to play in your classroom.

• Featured: Discover how maths can help your music.

Revisiting Roles in Education

Revisiting Roles in Education

The question of how to provide the best possible education to all of India’s children has given rise to heated debate about the government’s role in the education sector, as well as what role other stakeholders have to promote the ambitious goals of the RTE Act. Is education purely the domain of the government, or is there room for other players to make impact? With the general perception of private education seen as more positive and of higher quality than public education, the role non-government stakeholders play is critical, given the challenges India’s education sector must confront and resolve.

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Click for more...

Courtesy - Ravi Kaimal, Board Member BAT

Anamika & Nivedita's Marvelous Model

School News - Monday 11th March 2013

This week we have  only the news as teachers and students all are busy preparing for the Annual Examination, more articles after the exams.

NEWS:

8th MARCH:Women's Day was celebrated in our school.On that day all the lady teachers organised a show to show that we all are proud to be a woman .The prayer and assembly was conducted by Prerna Rathod. Then Principal Ma'am said a few words on this day. I gave a speech on the topic 'Proud to be a woman' .Then some teachers recited a poem, others gave a speech At the end of the programme Malvika Mishra sang a solo song and two group songs were sung  by the teachers to make this day more exciting for all of us Principal Ma'am presented us a beautiful red rose and a lunch was organised for the staff at 'King's Abode Hotel ' 

On the same day Face Painting Competition was organised for the students of class 4 to 9.More than forty students participated in this competition and painted beautiful faces in the form of tigers,butterflies ,spiderman, joker etc.

Bharti Rao

Loomis Chaffe in India

The weekend was great for us!

On 9th we welcomed the group and had an orientation at the BAT office.

What they have done so far...
Shahpur Jat for orientation, Hauz Khas Village walk, shopping at the Fabindia store and Dilli Haat.

Visits to the Hope Project and Parvah partners.

Dinner hosted by William Bissell at the India Habitat Centre on Sunday the 10th of March.

We wish them all the best for the trip onward.

Linked learning

ENGLISH IS A FUNNY LANGUAGE

An oxymoron is usually defined a phrase in which two words of contradictory  meanings are brought together.

1. Clearly misunderstood                                  2. Act naturally
3. Exact estimate                                              4. Found missing
5. Small crowd                                                  6. Fully empty
7. Pretty ugly                                                     8. Seriously funny
9. Only choice                                                   10. Original copies
 
 And MOTHER  of all  Happily married!

Courtesy
Parineeta Rangpal our very special School Principal and Innovator
<prl@fabindiaschools.in>

YouTube is the School of the Future

Former Bay Area hedge fund manager Sal Khan’s virtual YouTube school, The Khan Academy, is on a mission to provide an excellent education to anyone, anywhere, and for free. Started in 2004 with videos Khan created to tutor his cousins, this Harvard MBA's lessons now have over 10 million YouTube views- more than the free lectures posted by Khan’s other alma mater, MIT.His videos teach math concepts from basic addition to calculus, almost every science topic imaginable, and even break down the Geithner Plan. GOOD's Liz Dwyer talked to Kahn about how virtual schools might revolutionize the educational landscape.

Can online learning actually help close the achievement gap?

Yes. The first thing is you flip around the model of lectures and homework. Videos are watched on the student’s time because that’s passive learning. Then you do exercises in the classroom where you have your teachers and your peers with you and you can solve problems together. The big difficulty for students doing homework is you’re doing it in a vacuum where you wish you had your teachers and your peers around. You get no feedback, and if you get all the problems wrong, there’s no time in class the next day to actually practice it with feedback. Online learning changes all that.

Hole in the Wall

Education innovator Sugata Mitra won a whopping $1 million TED Prize today for his "Hole in the Wall Experiment" to improve the future of learning by using technology to empower students to teach themselves.

The Hole in the Wall projects helps poor children in the slums of Hyderabad, India teach themselves English. By giving students access to tools like computers, Mitra showed that uneducated, non-English speaking children could work in small groups and with the help of computers, teach themselves how to speak and read. 

Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University and visiting professor at M.I.T., is the eighth winner of the TED Prize. The prize is awarded to one social entrepreneur to fund his or her big idea. 

School News 3rd March 2013

Personality and more...
Please click the link for the release.

Bharti Rao

The Country That Stopped Reading - NYTimes.com

The Country That Stopped Reading - NYTimes.com: " “Who likes to read?” I asked. Only one hand went up in the auditorium. I picked out five of the ignorant majority and asked them to tell me why they didn’t like reading. The result was predictable: they stuttered, grumbled, grew impatient. None was able to articulate a sentence, express an idea."

'via Blog this'

Unfortunately, teachers were not properly trained and children were not given time for reading in school. The plan focused on the book instead of the reader. I have seen warehouses filled with hundreds of thousands of forgotten books, intended for schools and libraries, simply waiting for the dust and humidity to render them garbage.

In our schools, children are being taught what is easy to teach rather than what they need to learn. This is in Mexico and is a real reflection of where we stand... 

Read on

NY Times

We now need to put in place the plan 'Read to Lead' for our Teachers at The Fabindia School

- Sandeep Dutt

Teacher's Weekly - 07/03/13 - Issue No. 3

For our third issue of the Weekly we did a lot of introspection and wanted to go beyond just thought, move on to real action! As teachers we think it is best to profile the students we work with and get to not only know them better, but reflect on what we do. This has resulted in our quest of the good in every individual and the stories we share are not reel life but real life... you will find one teacher share the story of one pupil every week. The name of the teacher is the header and the story of the student below.

Neelam Malviya

Rajveer is a student of class 2 A . 

He lives in Bera. 

He is naughty but sincere. 

He respects elders. 

He has attitude in himself .

He takes care of his things.

Monika Vaishnav

I am glad to write about a child  of my class. Minal solanki is studying  in class 2 B. She is so cute and sweet in behavior  She loves to recite poems , drawing pictures and  solving sums on the black board. She takes care of her things very well.She is always careful about her studies and eager to know something. She always completes her work  on time. Whenever she couldn't complete her H.W , she comes to me and tells the reason before I ask ,I love that innocent behavior. During P.T.M I came to know that  she wants to be a teacher  that's why she does mimicry of teachers , she says her parents to act like a students and herself as a teacher and it shows her Innocent, creativeness  and awareness in the school. I am happy to have a student like her.

Sapna Puri

Name - Dhawal Choudhary

Class Prep A

1. He is 6 year old.

2. He is very emotional by nature.

3. He is very talkative boy.

4. Whatever he does at home he shares with me always in the class

5. He is a good dancer.

More stories for you...

Loomis Chaffe India Visit

The Trustees of BAT and The Fabindia Schools welcome the Loomis Chaffee group to India. We hope they have a great time and take back fond memories of incredible India.

Cheers!

Sandeep Dutt



Loomis Chaffee India Tour
Follow along here as Loomis Chaffee students travel throughout India during their spring break trip with the Center for Global Studies!

Trustees Group at the 20 Year Celebrations

Sandeep, Ravi, Kamini, Parineeta (Principal), William, Guest & Katherine

English Language Lab now working

Dear All,

Good Evening. I  just wanted to share my weekly report and give you a heads up on the progress of the Language Laboratory Project. As already shared earlier, the implementation of the English Language Lab has been done on our school server. The Language Lab is now functional and an Introductory session along with a demo of the English language lab was successfully done by me for all the teachers earlier today. 

Attached is the list of teachers who attended the session from beginning to end. During the session, I started with an introduction on the lab  and its objectives and briefed them about the project. After that I gave a demo session along with a small practical tour of the functionality of the language lab.

All teacher were very excited. I believe that the language lab would be helpful to improve the communication skills of the teachers and students and will make a substantial difference at the school. I will now start to work on the other objectives and set myself clear goals.

Thanking you,

Warm Regards,

Sandeep Kumar

Project Manager and English Lab Trainer
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Teachers Present

Bharti Rao

Chandrapal Singh

Bhaarat

Daksha Jain

Krishan Gopal

Gajendra Mewara

Dinesh Bharti

Suresh Kumar

Moinika Vaishnav

Usha Panwar

Neelam Malviya

Om Rathod

Ritu Rajpurohit

Bhavika Ozha

Urmila Rathod

Bhawna Arya

Kusum Dangi

Suresh Singh Negi

Surendra Singh

Byju P. Joseph

M.Kavitha Devda

Awdesh Kumar

Imran Tak