By the end of First round of CASW

I have been the presenter for 2 presentations and participant for 6 presentation of CASW from January - till date. In every session during the participant discussion I found that the kind of strategies given by the participant is repetitive or it is some how related to his/her own field of expertise.
For instance
- when I give suggest some strategies they were related to technology most of the time.
- Raji's suggests strategies that works for a child with learning difficulty.
- Srini strategies are based on class room management, assessment.
- maheshwaran’s strategies were related to “Key questions”.
- Neela give importance to formative assessment, Motivation and learning patterns.
-Mr.Amarnathan's strategies are related to articles, journal writing.
-Mahua strategies were based on Motivation and so on.......

High school section group

High school section - group2 has completed with the first round of the casw presentation.

Newsflash

Update: Bala's session is over and it had real depth. Next - on March 8th, same place same time : Rags and her session. Four down and two to go. The +2 group.

Module 1 & 2 Assessments...

...& feedback are ready! Please stop by our office and see Tara & me. There's a sign up sheet on the "red door". Please pencil your name down in an empty time slot...See you all soon...

Calling all 'silent' PPSE bloggers...

Hello everyone!

There is a fantastic discussion raging here - on the issue of extrinsic "rewards" and "punishments" (or "R & P" as Dharma has aptly abbreviated the terms!) that I think we all stand to benefit from. It's great how the 'comments' section take on a discussion-like quality.

Unfortunately, this group blog seems to have very few active PPSE members. There is a conspicuous absence of our elem. school PPSEites - Gudrun, Geeta, Christina, Kalpana - who I'm sure face several situations on a daily basis where they're faced with motivating kids who're not listening or paying attention or whatever. Would love to hear your thoughts on these issues, and how you are tackling them in Elem. school.

Anupama, Amarnathan, Srini, Gulab, Anitha, Hema, Vijaya, Uday, Mahesh - I do hope you all are also visiting this space regularly. We cannot tell since we don't see any blog entries or comments coming from you. Do drop a comment sometime...

Group 3 CASW meeting schedule

The tentative schedule for the group 3 (Are you guys listening?)

Wednesday- 22nd - Raji, Amarnathan,Neela
Friday- 24th- Anitha-review
(the review meetings for the others will be in Mar)

bloggin woes...contd

Hi Shuchi!

My blog is still accessible only from the on the contributors list. (We had changed my blog to read 'ppserajinew'.Is that why? The ppse blogs links to my old blog.Can it be changed? Thanks

Continuing some thoughts in view of other thoughts....

No point blaming anyone, Joel. We come from a system that is highly teacher-centric. Most of the schools around us are also teacher-centric, exam-driven, text-book centred and the pressure on teachers in Aditi to follow like-wise is immense from anxious parents who believe that that is the only way to provide a "successful" education to their kids so that they do well in the IIT entrance exam or walk into Stanford university with full aid! Nothing wrong in these aspirations, but the belief that this can only be achieved through direct teaching, text book learning and drill and kill is absolutely unacceptable to us at Aditi. Our contention is that good teaching practice based on an understanding of how a child learns, will result in real understanding and high achievement in academics as well! Nowhere do rewards and punishments picture in this scheme as motivators. Mind you, I am not suggesting that there be no consequences for going against accepted rules - there has to be some accountablilty for going over a word limit, for example, but when we are discussing strategies in CASW meetings, let us stick to improving teaching practice with an understanding of how the brain learns best. We were fully agreed that the brain does not learn in an atmosphere of fear, so using punishment as a motivator does not work! Koshy, maybe rewards work better than punishments, but they are no substitute for intrinsic motivation - there is no greater motivator for doing 5 hours of Riyaz than the pleasure of hitting a Swar with more perfect accuracy than you ever have! No Riyaz for a prestigious concert will match that. And that is the kind of motivation that we have to try and build into our lessons - to nurture within each child the desire to hit the perfect note!!

+ 2 group's next three CASW sessions

... will be on next Wednesday 22nd - Bala's - and March 8th, another Wednesday, - Anu's and Vijaya's.

Regarding reward/ punishment - I feel rewards matter , while fear and punishment doesn't - as for applying brain based learning strategies, it may be a bit unpopular because actual implementation is harder than expected....

PPSEite Blog Links

Hi everyone,

It's done! I have moved up the links to everyone's personal blogs in the right hand side bar here. They now appear immediately below the 'About' blog description on the right of this page. The 'Contributor' links were being confused for the blog links by many. Hopefully, this change should make it easier for you all to reach yours and your colleagues' blogs.

Do let me know if you still have any issues...

Shuchi

Echo Tara's Sentiments

WOnderful to read reflections on what did or did not motivate you, Joel and Neela.

I would like to underscore the point that Tara's making here. I'm not sure if there is much thought being given to how students can be motivated based on the lovely ideas that came out of our discussions on brain-based learning. Instead, the "Let assignments be graded" type of suggestion has come up in almost every CASW session that had to do with increasing student motivation.

So, I think Tara's observations are timely and on the mark. Please do give this some thought, folks, and let's think "how people learn" and "cognitive psychology" a bit more than "reward"/"punishment". The latter is very easy to suggest and perhaps even implement, but is it the best we can do?

Some thoughts

I have been reading all the postings on your blogs after each CASW session. I have been thinking about some issues that seem to be all-pervading. Many key questions seem to be going into problems with individual students and problems of motivation. Several suggested strategies are to do with rewards and punishments. I would urge all of you to think beyond rewards and sanctions and look at intrinsic motivation. If we understand the context of the child, can we not look for the interests of the child and plan work around that? Would that not be a better motivator than rewards and punishment?

Also, do look up Alfie Kohn and John Holt - we have their books in the library, or you can type a search with their names and rewards and punishments on Google search. You may not agree, but you could think about it.

Can you think of any instance in your life where the desire for a reward sparked a long term interest in any activity? Further, can you recall any instance when the fear of a punishment got you hooked on to any topic?

I remember a Geography teacher when I was in Std 06, who was particularly scary and how I did study hard so as to please her, but how the very text book became distasteful to me! I still have a problem with all things geographic!!

Two more

Gulab Jain sir's and Joel's presentations have come and gone ... please read the blogs to find out what is happening... it's getting quite hectic and interesting....