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Working with math materials in the second workshop!

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So it is Saturday afternoon and Galen and I are waiting for the boys to finish with their chores to go to the swimming pool. I completed my second full week of work and my second workshop this morning! The week was quite interesting. I went to visit Isai Amballam, another school in Auroville for village children. The previous week 5 of their teachers had attended the workshop and invited me to come. The schools is quite small- 100 children and housed in a building that is L shaped.  I loved seeing the classrooms as they have small shelves and tables separating the rooms into three or 4 areas where the children can play with different manipulatives while the teacher works with a small group of children. The teachers were very excited to show me a word curriculum that they teach using flash cards. They want me to come back this week and give them feedback and suggestions. My thought of course is to have them move away from flashcards into teaching words through songs and stories and contexts that give meaning to the words. I will have to think this week of how to convey this idea while still honoring a method of teaching that they are clearly proud of. Mostly what I loved was seeing the children engaged in play, and the enthusiasm with which the teachers invited me into their rooms and showed me around. The friendship and open hospitality which is almost always extended to me here in southern India by the Tamils is one of the reasons I love being and working here.

A teacher at Isai Amballam works with a small group while the other children play with puzzles and building materials.

In Aikiyam I began a special English project with the 6^th std who was my old class when I was here 14 months ago. As I became very close with the children in this class I am very eager to spend time with them and they asked me if I would come back and teach them. Not wanting to encroach on the teachers starting their curriculums with the class I hesitantly approached Sathiya- their home room teacher (so to speak) and English teacher. Sathiya used to live in the boarding house before she was married this year- so I know her quite well. She eagerly invited me to come and take the class for one English period each week while I am here. I tried to think of an activity that would be fun, different and manageable in just 5 or 6 classes. While browsing through the library I came on groups of Roald Dahl books that I actually helped the school purchase in Chennai a year and a half ago when Aikiyam had gotten a grant to restock their library. Our intent had been to have multiple copies of some books in order to do book clubs with the older children. I immediately decided to try this idea out and spent a night reading through some of the easier books to pick 4 or 5 with which I could form book clubs. My first class with them the children chose which book they wanted to read and we talked about Roald Dahl and who he was. The children then looked at the covers of their books and wrote what they thought the book would be about based on the cover and title. So we will see how that goes next week…

2^nd and 3^rdstandard had their first combined choice time ,which I assisted with and was really an introduction for both the children and the teachers. Having 43 or 44 children working on different projects takes a lot of organization but there will be 4 teachers (Shanthi, Mala, Selvaraj and a volunteer) each week to help. The children will get to work with blocks, legos, stitching, craft work, drawing, writing, reading, puzzles, and toys.

Choice Time Sign up board- we will add pictures next time so that it is easier for the children to read the activity choices!

Selvaraj explains "Choice Time" to 2nd and 3rd grades

In the kindergartens and crèche classes I documented the children’s block work for the workshop on blocks. I also have been collaborating with the teachers to do storytimes each morning in UKG and LKG with songs in English and read alouds to the children. In the afternoons we are continuing to discuss activities and what children learn by doing them. Sathiyavani, the special needs teacher for the younger grades, came and shared what she does to help the children with body awareness. I am documenting our discussions and working on compiling a book for the teachers of all the activities that we have brainstormed and discussed together.

A child in UKG tried to balance these two blocks together!

This week I called my workshop “Meaningful Math,” and centered it around activities that teach math skills but are meaningful to the children, such as making a weather graph, or  measuring objects in the classroom with string, or working with blocks, legos and puzzles. I first invited the teachers to try out the activities planned. The teachers were very hesitant at first and I had to really encourage them to create with legos, pattern blocks or try to make survey. After 10 minutes of surveying the choices they did get to work and created some very interesting things. Of course I felt very good when Manju (a teacher from the crèche) said to me, “Meghan we need a copy of all the activities so we can do them in the classroom!” She and Usha and I had already discussed how to implement some ideas into the classroom on a level that we be appropriate for 3 year-olds. They are using pictures of the children to create an attendence  chart!

Teachers working on puzzles together

Nava constructs a building from legos

After the activities we all came together and everyone drew pictures of what they think of when they think of math. Some very interesting ideas came up. “You can’t do anything without math. It is the basics,” Aruna (UKG said). USha (crèche) folded her paper up as if she was doing origami, then she unfolded it and showed us the triangles, squares and the geometry in it. “All the world is math,” Manju (crèche) added. After this we discussed how to make math meaningful- in other words, how to do activities that teach math skills but are also exciting for the children and connect to the world that they know.  I explained some of what was displayed and the teachers shared what they had worked on.

Set up for math workshop!

The teachers gather together to discuss their ideas on the topic "what is math?" and to share about the activities they worked on.

Graphing the names of all the teachers!

Then we moved to the block room! In the block room the teachers divided into pairs and they took turns building and observing each other. Afterwards each pair shared their observations of their partner and what they felt like as they were working on their building. We discussed the math behind block building and I gave everyone a photograph from the wonderful block book (thanks Nomi for lending it to me!!) that is a curriculum map of all the skills learned through block building. Then it was tea time! The teachers had been requesting more time to discuss activities together as it can be hard to fit these conversations into the busy school days. So after tea I had them split into groups according to their interest to do this. We had a “body awareness group” a “science group” and a “math in art group.” The teachers discussed activities (and in the body awareness group they actually did the activities) and wrote them on large papers. We then shared back to the whole group and I collected them to go towards our documentation and book. Lastly I had prepared a slide show of the children’s block buildings that week which gave us a progressive view of the developmental growth of children using building with blocks. It also highlighted some moments such as a boy in Upper Kindergarten trying to balance a block on an angle (physics and mathematics!) and how he solved the problem and what the building eventually looked like as he continued to work on it.

Working with blocks!

More block building and observation practice!

There were many interesting ideas in block building- this one was made by Vanitha!

Teachers sharing body awareness activities together

Well- by the time I finished writing all of that it is now Sunday morning. Galen and I drove to Pondi yesterday, than took the boys swimming in the pool. Afterwards Nirmalraj and I rode around to buy some vegetables, which I made a huge salad to go along with the fish stew that was for dinner. The children seem to be much more excited about salads these days then they used to be and nothing gives me so much satisfaction as seeing them wolf down fresh vegetables! Even little Auro was eating his veggies and practicing with a fork! Tixon and Vanitha went out for the night so Galen and I watched Lord of the Rings with the kids. They were pretty much glued to the movie! Tixon and Vanitha came home around 10 with a bag of guavas (or Goas as they call then here) and I ate 3…yes, I did. Galen’s and mine. The fruit here is just sooooo tasty.  And now it is Sunday morning and I am looking forward to a day of resting…some what. Probably will take the kids to the beach in the afternoon and we will definitely eat some idly and tomato chutney this morning! Just another day in India.

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