PROJECT BASED LEARNING 2014 – 15

WALO - 1

PLANNIG “SHELTER” ACROSS THE GRADES

Inspiration

I am a Play house teacher. Along with teaching, I am leading the team too. So planning

is a key responsibility in this role. I always had a doubt of “how much is too much?”

The class teacher would know her own children and accordingly she will plan, but may

be in other classes, teachers, who are new, will teach more than necessary or less

than what is really needed. It was very important for me to know where a teacher

should stop the topic. This question was always bothering me.

Last year I was with Prek and this year I am in Play house. When I was planning the

topic – SHELTER (for Playhouse) I realized that many of the things was taken up at

same level in play house and Prek both. I approached K1 teachers; I got to know that

they were taking up this topic, but the content was not connected to Play house and

Prek. This gave us (as a team) realization to sit together and plan this topic (Shelter).

This would help us to stay focused and be creative for our own grade.

Action plan

In preprimary section, we have certain topics like My needs, Survival, Food, etc. which

is linked from playhouse to K2. Bellamam, our leader, took the initiative to sit across

with all the grade heads and plan this topic of SHELTER across. We made our own

Flow chart and collaborated with other teams. We had lot of content so we synergized

the content grade wise for the topic - Shelter. This new method of planning across has

become beneficial and clear for all the teachers to know where to start from and where

to end.

Learning: General

When we sat for planning of Shelter, our leader asked all of us to make a FLOW

CHART. In this, we show our flow of the lesson in brief. This was a wonderful

opportunity to put up my ideas, for the topic.

Till last year I used to introduce topic by connecting this as one of the “needs” of

anyone to live. But these babies are too young for understanding the term “needs”.

When we sat together, Bella ma’am guided us to start the topic by connecting it with

school and bringing similarities and differences between school and home both. For

play house and prek babies authentic experiences play major role. So the whole topic

was planned in connection to the school, for these two grades. Later, for K1 we took a

step ahead of knowing different types of houses and also that even animals need

shelter. Children will also learn about shelters of different animals. In K2, as children

are able to write, we have planned to make them write about “My home” and bringing

the concept of difference between house and home. This will allow children to get

sensitized towards “HOME”

So this way, the topic took a new look this year. What I found about myself was I am

open for amendments and flexibility in the process of planning. This was not only for

me but all the teachers had this acceptance.

Learning: Leading & Collaborating with colleagues

Through this experience, I realized across planning serves not only to enhance my

practices, but also to stay in touch with others and therefore, foster our collaborative

relationship towards pushing each other’s teaching and thinking. This is an important

way for me to connect with my colleagues, collaborate with them and to develop the

best education for our students.

Flow Chart

Learning: Action Research

Finally, planning across is helping me to advance me in my action research because I

was able to find new ways to promote thinking in my class. For eg: This topic is all

about celebrating similarities and differences. At play house level, it is “aiming high”

But as we had planned across, and everything was connected, so I had to find ways

for building this concept. So I brought connection of school with this topic.

Reflection:

This process of planning the lessons across the grades has benefitted all of us

(students, teachers and as a team) in terms of getting a proper focus. Students will be

able to make the connections with whatever they would have learnt in previous grades.

This also allows us (team) to share our classroom practices and learn from each other.

Questions:

- As we plan the topics across the grades, will it be possible for the entire year?

- Availability of teachers is a question mark

- How can I make difference in the mindsets of people who have strong beliefs for

practices, which can be wrong

Next Steps

We are at preprimary level. We have started planning across within our grades. I would

like to take this practice to 2 grades ahead. For eg: Place Value – We start this from K1

level which is taken ahead in further grades. If we plan across from K1 to Grade2 it will

be very clear to teachers about the content and practices.

Nairuti