Congratulations on completion of your Face to Face Sessions

Time to think...... share ideas...........understand.......and create meaning
As teachers - Why we do? What we do?? and Finding ways to make our lessons more enjoyable for our learners :)

All the discussion and Collaboration......








All the Team work, planning and research........has now helped us to move to step 2 of the CIDTT Diploma - Planning the Program and sessions. Hope you have a fruitful meeting with your mentors.

All the Best!!



Evaluation

Ms Sudarshana's evaluation class really gave me a wonderful feeling.
It made me to refine, reproduce, redo, reinvent the same things when I try to do my lesson plans. But honestly I wasn't bored of doing the same thing. It is quite natural thing to do. The constant feed backs from both teacher and students will naturally help you to do so. Informally we all do evaluation, but it is always true we can not provide the feed back to our assessment. When we do it formally, definitely we can give the feed back with evidence for further improvement.

I could not make out the fine lining between ASSESSMENT & EVALUATION, but Ms Sudarshana quickly said it. And told us how it is different.

I think a good evaluation technique helps other also. I mean to say to other teachers or the teachers like me or the organization in future decision making.

Colleague feedback for summative

Informal feedback for Summative Lesson - Sonali

Students recieved you very enthusiastically. You have established a visible bond with them.
Students were given a choice of writing songs, poems, and essays and also given topic ideas as differentiation.
You had colourful and captivating charts ready on the relevant writetraits.
Through their feedback forms, students recorded their thoughts and experiences and reflected upon the tasks.
Your plan to ask students to focus on their best work pieces and reflect on why they chose them, was a great idea and students were proud to see their work on a corridor board as a summative presentation
Through the bulletin board, students were able to grasp the full impact of the lessons that led up to that culmination.
The entire unit plan was very useful and benefitted my class's writing skills, knowledge of the Write Traits as well as attitude towards writing. Grade 4 D and I are very thankful to you.
I wish you the very best in the teaching profession, and I have no doubt you will be an asset.

Bulletin board





The students were made to choose their best work under any one write traits - namely word choice , sentence fluency , essay , ideas and all the work that they had done was compiled for the making of their own bulletin board . Students were motivated to give their best when they were informed that their sheets will be presented . I also wrapped up their learning by informally introducing them to the writing process . They can now see the purpose and meaning behind learning 3 write traits . There are formally 6 plus 1 but I chose the uppermost ones and the amalgamation of all their work was displayed . It took into account various intelligences - kinaesthetic , visual , interpersonal , intrapersonal , musical . Students even composed acrostic poems and songs . Work was done individually but I made them edit each others work .

EVALUATION-Technique for self improvisation

I always thought that 'Evaluation' was for the learners , in fact couldn't differentiate between the terms evaluation and assessment but Sudarshana through our last session helped us in understanding the true meaning of the term. Evaluation is actually assessing ownself as to how I'm teaching and whether I am able to successfully convey knowledge to my learners to my heart's content!

I realised the need for feedback by my learners because they are the best judge of my teaching methodologies I also felt that self evaluation is essential to realise my shortcomings and work out on methods to improvise myself.

CIDTT is actually helping us become better individuals (besides being better teachers)through these reflection,evaluation techniques.Realising our own shortcomings and mistakes and trying to rectify them is the most difficult task because once we grow up as adults,we assume ourselves to be perfect and this myth about ourselves hinders our growth further professionally and personally.Thanks to CIDTT for breaking this MYTH....

An argument for which of the five geometry terms is most important!

I AM THE GREATEST!!
Five people were travelling together and on their way they got into conversation. They introduce themselves as a Mr.Point,Miss Line,Mr.Line segment,Miss Ray and Mr. Angle.Each one tries to impress the others with their greatness.
Mr.Point:I am the alpha and the omega,the beginning and the end.Iam in everything,nothing starts or ends without me,hence I am the greatest!
Miss Line:You think so??you are a part of me but only a part.I go on and on and on....I have no limits,hence "I am the greatest'.Everyone else is a part of me.I am flexible and can twist and turn and twirl and make you dizzy!!
Mr.Line Segment: Really?But I am the greatest.You just go on and on and on but I am more definite.
Miss Ray:I don't agree.I am definite but at the same time limitless. I combine the best of both worlds.I have a direction,I show the way,'I am the greatest'.
Mr.Angle:Look at it from my angle.I am the greatest.I am diverse,I own you all.The world is within my arms.

"My most memorable day as a teacher!"

This is one line every teacher would love to comment on .... and I am not any different from the others.
My most memorable day as a teacher was when I started to teach Prof. Rajeswari Chatterjee, who in her own capacity was a great teacher and had retired as chairperson of the Electrical engg department a long time ago from IISC. It was about seven years ago and she called me to teach her how to work with computers and write short stories using Microsoft word. I was spell bound at the call as I was getting this fantastic opportunity to teach a great teacher herself .So my oldest or should I say the most youngest student was of 80 years.
When I started with my first class all she said was " neenu nanna teacher ivathininda ( You are my teacher from today )"and that statement meant a lot to me as I was just a baby in the teaching world and she was already a master at teaching. The irony was I would always call her Madam, and she would reply by saying yes madam, all the time I was teaching her . It took her a lot of classes to completely and confidently start using the computer. She was actually completing an assignment of the creative writing class she had taken up that summer at US when she visited her daughter.
I used to demonstrate how to use the icons and then the short cuts to her and she would promptly write down every step in a big book that she had sewed up of old paper from books.I found that so very interesting as every student old or young finally starts with writing down things. She would always tell me that she would not remember once I left her place ,and that since she was OLD ( I would never agree with this one) she had to write it down to help her memory.
My experience went on for almost 6 months and I had the most memorable experience as I learnt a lot of lessons about life for a class on technology. Madam passed away on Friday 3rd Sep2010 but the memories I have had from my teaching experience will always stay with me and guide me through out .
Thanks to Madam I got the opportunity to become a good teacher !!!.
                  
                    Photo of: Rajeswari Chatterjee
      My dearest Chatterjee Madam.
Thank you for teaching me to be  a good teacher. I will always remember you and miss you a lot!!!


Differentiation

I teach grade I and one of the major challenges for me has been to integrate children of varied learning styles in the classroom. We get prepared question papers for assessments, so there was not much I could do except give some visual or verbal cues to children who find it difficult to answer questions.
Last week I had a buffer day to revise the concept "Being Verbs". It turned out to be a refresher course for me in setting a question paper. I had divided the class into 3 levels-The high achievers; The average students and The slow learners. I had set 3 different papers. The objective of my lesson was that children will be able to identify a being verb(am, is, are, was, were, has, have) in a given sentence and also fill in the blanks with the right being verb choosing from a set of options.
For my slow learners all questions were based on identifying and selecting the right option.
eg: Meera and I ___ reading a book.(am, is, are)-fill the blank with the right option.
The average learners had the same question without the options.
The high achievers also had the same question without options but in addition they had to make another sentence with the being verb.
After the assessment I could see the whole class was happy. The slow and average learners were happy to have answered most of the questions and the high achievers were happy that there was a challenge element.
I was happy that the learning outcome of the entire group matched the objective set at the beginning of the lesson and the children who usually finish their tasks quickly and disturb others were occupied for an entire 35 minute period.
Thanks to cidtt.