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Showing posts from November, 2018

There is a direct connection between child's healthy social-emotional development and academic success:

Snippets: - Social development : It is our interaction with others. It is the ability to form secure relationships.  - Emotional development : It is regulating and expressing emotions. It involves the way one feels about themselves, others and the world. ·          -    Show your feelings. Let your child see when you are happy or sad. This helps them to develop empathy for others. -  Young children who develop strong early relationships with parents, family, caregivers, and teachers learn how to pay attention, cooperate, and get along with others. Image source: https://mn.wordpress.com/tag/social-emotional-development/page/3/ What can affect social-emotional development? A person’s life experiences, genetic makeup, and temperament can affect social-emotional development. How will social-emotional development impact academic success? When children feel good about themselves and develop confidence, they will form secure relationships with others and ulti

Why is it important to teach social-emotional skills before child enters school:

- Social-Emotional Skills include the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary for youth to recognize and control their emotions and behaviors; establish and maintain positive relationships; make responsible decisions and solve challenging situations; and set and achieve positive goals. Source . - Some examples of social-emotional skills are like Adaptability, Empathy, Patience, Forgiveness, Gratitude, Honesty and so on. More examples. - Many researches indicate that  social and emotional skills children gain, or don’t gain, before they enter kindergarten have a profound effect on their lifelong journey. - The problem is that more and more children are entering school without these critical skills. - One study found that of over 9,000 children entering kindergarten in the Baltimore Public Schools more than half didn’t meet benchmarks for social-behavior readiness. These include social and emotional skills which are used everyday. Like following directions, complying with r

Lets start talking educational transformation:

In today’s scenario, we face unprecedented challenges – social, economic and environmental – driven by accelerating globalization and a faster rate of technological developments. At the same time, these forces provide us with myriad new opportunities for human advancement through education. On the contrary, current education system is preparing students only for jobs. It is not a question whether the education provides or fails to provide employment but it is a question if the education brings the best out of the children. The children entering schools in 2019 will be young adults in 2037. Schools are expected to prepare them for jobs that have not yet been created, to the technologies that have not yet been invented, to solve problems that have not yet been anticipated. It is going to be our shared responsibilities to seize opportunities and find solutions. To navigate through such uncertainty, students have to develop curiosity, imagination, resilience and self regulation; they ha

Involve parents, carers and families for school success:

Work with parents/carers and families can add strength and depth, and has been shown to have a significant impact in making approaches and specific interventions more effective, both by helping family life reinforce the messages of the school and through helping parents and carers develop their own parenting skills and attitudes. The school has an important part to play in supporting the kind of parenting and family life that boosts well-being. This can be done informally, through conversation with individual parents and carers, or more formally through presentations at parents’ evenings, printed information, parenting education courses, and designated family link workers. Parents and carers who may not have had a positive experience of parenting themselves may need particular help to respond to their children’s behaviour in emotionally literate ways, to spend quality time with their children, to focus on their children’s strengths, to listen, empathise and understand the causes

Opportunity for Action research for teachers:

Dear leader makers, Teachers could do action research in their schools and classrooms, work on their ideas and share stories so that it can be published formally and informally too. We can also publish in this blog (reach.clf@gmail.com). What is action research and it's steps? Click to read from internet: All you have to do is to give shape to your ideas with data. For example, MS school branch at Zaheerabad have removed school bell and started teaching time management. Now, teachers as well as students value time and teachers reach classes on time without Bells. MS Mallepally is experimenting with goals and block period. They found that a chapter that is taught in 7 periods can be taught within 3 continuous periods with proper planning and breaks & innovative methodologies. Below are few topics on which Action Research can be undertaken: Changing cultural dynamics in lifestyle, parenting as well as schooling: • Holistic Education to nurture Body, Mind, Heart and Soul

Remembering childhood days..

Children these days are so lucky that they don't even know that in our days we could get beaten up for any of the following reasons: (a loooooooong list) 😶😳🙄😆🤣 1. Crying after being beaten. 2. Not crying after being beaten. 3. Crying without being beaten. 4. Standing while the elders were seated. 5. Sitting while the elders were standing. 6. Walking around aimlessly where the elders were seated. 7. Replying back to an elder. 8. Not replying back to an elder. 9. Sleeping while the elders had already woken up. 10. Looking at an elder eye ball to eye ball. 11. When an elder was talking to you and you blinked your eye. 12. When an elder was talking to you and you stared without blinking. 13. When you looked at an elder with a corner eye. 14. Spending too much time without being beaten. 15. Singing after being beaten. 16. Not greeting visitors. 17. Eating food prepared for the visitors. 18. Crying to go with the visitors when the visitors were leaving. 19. Look

Natural interest among students to interact with each other can be leveraged to an academic benefit, through peer learning:

- Technology is changing education from being a teacher-centred instruction to a learner-centred education, where students take greater initiative and responsibility to manage their own learning. In these developments how can we integrate peer learning strategy to improve learning outcomes. - Peer learning refers to students learning with and from each other as fellow learners without any implied authority to any individual. - Peer learning pedagogy is part of an active learning strategy. - Students who engage in an environment of open and free communication, study well and perform better academically. - In peer learning students will engage with each other intellectually, debate each other’s views, reaching an agreement or a disagreement. - What is happening in most of the schools? . Currently students learn in 'silos". In business language silos refers to a situation wherein departments or management groups do not share information, goals, tools, priorities and processe

Just the things happening in our society right now..😱 but how to keep the child away from social media and cellphones? Any solutions?

This was the question asked in WhatsApp group. This was answered by an education counselor: We need to believe that there is nothing called solution, we can call it as some of the steps which we can take to keep the usage of social media in control. That is, ethical use of social media. 1. First of all parents should be the role models for the children. parents should reduce their time on social media. 2. There should be strong bonding between parents and Children. This will makesure that the children respect the parents' views. 3. Some Do's and don'ts should be decided through democratic consensus. It means there should be some set of rules like no no mobile before and during food, no mobile before bedtime, no mobile after bedtime, no mobile to school, no mobile during family discussions/time. It is often found that we as a parent are not following these ethics. 4. We can also set and agree upon rules as to, what sites and apps are allowed, based on type of app/websit

Using optimistic language in the classroom can change the way children learn and respect themselves and the others:

- While delivering lecture in class many of us are unaware that we are addressing the minds and hearts with the powerful tool of communication and hence are not very mindful of the choice of words. - Teachers have the opportunity to reframe students’ pessimistic statements into more optimistic ones. - The kind of language that the students use also can reflect the thoughts that they have about themselves. Click to read from source:

Are our children future ready?

It is a general consensus that our schools are making our children future ready to get into the collaborative, dynamic and diverse world out there. It is believed that if a child secures good grades and receives some talent certificates, the child is successful. Is it enough for a child to be future ready? Today I wrote this article as a reflection for a Whatsapp forward video I just watched. (Video is in the link at the end of the article). In this video, one of the corporate people tells that the young generation which is entering the jobs are not socially ready and competent. They come with job skills and not with social skills which are equally important to work in diverse teams as today. He further says, now we have taken this responsibility at our offices to teach the young the required social skills. People who are working will very well acknowledge that when we work with organizations, actually we are working with dissimilar people for a similar goal and vision. Isn’t

This makes one to think, is only college degree certifies a person's talent and capability:

This is a 30 minute session @ IIM-A by Ritesh Agarwal. Interesting fact is that he is a college drop out giving lecture at prestigious IIM. After listening to his experience of building a billion dollar Business, it makes one to think, is only college degree certifies a person's talent and capability. He discusses: - Experiencial learning in business. - Fixing things in an organised way. - Building processes and systems. - Building team. - Scaling up.... And lot more. Click to watch the video on YouTube: