Search This Blog

Follow Me on Pinterest

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Importance of a field trip to museum

Visiting museums is a an easy way to understand and get better knowledge about the past history or culture of that specific area. Museums are the places where we can observe centuries of history by looking at handicrafts and archaeological artifacts.

A primary role of museums is to engage and educate the community. Geography, culture and history can be linked and made interactive by visiting a museum.

One of the most crucial and difficult tasks of the museum today is to communicate a country's natural and cultural heritage in a way that illuminates the contemporary situation. Museums are examples of informal learning environments, which means they are devoted primarily to informal education — a lifelong process whereby individuals acquire attitudes, values, skills and knowledge from daily experience and the educative influences and resources in his or her environment.

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Benefits of mixed age classroom

Many parents are not aware of term 'mix age classroom' or 'composite class' and they are curious to know it. But this concept is not new, as this method is being applied and adopted in many schools around the world, successfully.
'Earth House Alternative School' adopted this method as being a small school. Whenever teachers arranged a learning session or group work in multi age classroom, it was observed that there was a very friendly and warm learning atmosphere among children. Older children in particularly become "experts" and explaining things to the younger ones. So this kind of social interaction helps all students learn many more things as compared to a regular classroom. In mixed-age classes, older children have opportunities to practice leadership skills and pro-social behaviors, like helping and sharing. Development of social or emotional skills is possible at ease, in a mixed age classroom.

Multi-age classrooms or composite classes are classrooms with students from more than one grade level.

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Story telling and cross curriculum links for enhanced learning

New research shows that 70% of what we learn is consumed through storytelling. For centuries, people have used stories to pass on knowledge. When information is embedded in the context of a story, it is transferred to a listener or reader in a unique way.

Students who learn through telling and reflectively processing their stories develop skills that enable them to link subjective and objective perspectives, capture the complexity of experience and bring about thoughtful change to self and practice.
When storytelling is used as a robust mode of inquiry, student learning is enhanced in multiple ways.

Stories bring learning to life in early years. A head teacher said: “I realized that this is truly inclusive learning – the impact is as significant on the gifted and talented as it is on reluctant and disengaged children – they all achieved together.”

Meaningful storytelling processes and activities incorporate opportunities for reflective dialogue, foster collaborative endeavor, nurture the spirit of inquiry and contribute to the construction of new knowledge. In addition, cultural, contextual and emotional realities can be acknowledged, valued and integrated into storytelling processes.

Last two weeks early year classes of 'Earth House Alternative School' were learning in an interactive way using the theme from famous story 'The Tiger Who Came To Tea'

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Importance of an educational psychologist in a school

According to a report from NCLD (National Center for Learning Disabilities) 'Today 57% of students with disabilities spend more than 80% of their day in general education classrooms, yet general education teachers consistently report that they do not have the skills they need to effectively instruct diverse learners, including students with disabilities.
So general education teachers must understand how to work with a growing population of diverse students. As students with learning disabilities are often overlooked or misunderstood. Understanding the implications of learning disabilities, preparing to teach students with diverse characteristics, and learning to accommodate students with learning disabilities are essential for general teachers.

Field trip to a bakery shop

For generations, in Bangladesh people knew that bakery means baked bakarkhani, pithas etc used as snacks. But now a days cakes, pastry and other food items that are sold commercially are replacing traditional homemade pithas, especially in urban areas.
Our children are in love for breads, cakes, tarts, pastries etc, but our traditional snacks still have value in our society.

More about our traditional snacks:

Bakarkhani(also called Bakorkhani, Bakharkhoni) breads are legendary and have been in existence in Dhaka from around the middle of eighteenth century. Bakarkhani or Pithas are often eaten at small meals, such as breakfast or as a snack with tea.

Pitha refers to a indigenous food and food tradition of Bangladesh. For pitha/peetha there is no similar word in English. To explain others in English we interpret pitha/peetha as a rice cake or pie. Pitha/peetha is a part of life and culture of the Banglis, but it is not part of our daily menu.
Most pithas/peethas are seasonal, specially prepared in the winter season because of some ingredients which are available only in winter season.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Field trip to Bangladesh National Museum

November 15, 2014 was the day to go for a field trip to 'Bangladesh National Museum'. We all were very excited to visit our national museum.  Our goal or purpose of this field trip was pr-planned and before leaving our school we reviewed it again. A '1st floor gallery index' of the museum was handed over to teachers.

What is a museum and why we need to visit it?

A museum conserves and exhibit the tradition, customs and heritage of a country. From a field trip to a museum, we can learn important concepts that derived from history, tradition, customs, persons, art and cultures.
Few facts about Bangladesh National Museum:

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

A field trip to dentist

Monday, 10th of November, our field trip to dentist started at around 9.30 am in the morning showing a Sesame Street video to children about oral/ dental health at school. They also watched the rhyme 'Every day I brush my teeth'.

Before starting our field trip to dentist, we learned about oral health or role of a dentist.

We knew what 'dentist' do. "Dentists are doctors who specialize in oral health/hygiene."
Oral hygiene is the practice of keeping the mouth and teeth clean to prevent dental problems, most commonly, dental cavities, gingivitis, and bad breath.
The responsibilities of a dentist include:
  • Diagnosing oral diseases. 
  • Promoting oral health and disease prevention. 
  • Creating treatment plans to maintain or restore the oral health of their patients. 
  • Monitoring growth and development of the teeth and jaws. 
  • Performing surgical procedures on the teeth, bone and soft tissues of the oral cavity.

Friday, October 3, 2014

Teaching methods and tips in islam

Having a few years of experience in the teaching field I feel that 'learning and refreshing our knowledge' while teaching is very important. It is the gift of our tech age, providing us opportunity to learn a lot from online resources available at the web. We have access to loads of information by attending seminars, workshops and training programs. We learn from research, experience of other teachers and use those methods in our classrooms for teaching BUT---------- as a muslim,
We should not forget that our Prophet Hazrat Mohammad (PBUH) was the best teacher, and we can learn the techniques or tips from the methods he adopted to teach mankind. Islam itself is a school and Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was the best teacher and tutor whose teachings and sayings still guide, inspire and instruct the whole humanity. Prophet (PBUH) explains the nature of his duty as follows in a hadith: "Allah sent me as a teacher."
We can see the education principles and methods put forward by modern education scholars in the practices of the Prophet.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...