Friday, January 8, 2010

02/01/10: No time for class! Shady! Sad! :-/


03/01/10: Hemant and his cousin Dhananjay had come. Tushar and Mahesh and Sham were trying to say things like- "Well... Been ages since Didii took us to BC..." :') So BC it was!

Then somebody somewhere said "Cricket!" And off they all went! And came back in negative time with 2 bats and a blue plastic ball! Hoof! I was to have a tough time today!

But then immediately we had a deal. I told them, you can play, but only after 16 minutes of study. Jitnaa study utnaa khel!

Thus we started with the homework problem at BC. None had done it at home anyway. :) With some difficulty, they calculated the length and breadth of the 3 strips of our flag. Which came out to be 12 and 2.66... (recurring decimal).

By this time some of them were already putting up the stupms! :D Then they played! They fought! When I tried to give some technical suggestion, Mahesh looked at me and asked, "Have you ever even played this game?!" And thus I knew who was the student then! :D :)

Enough! 16 minutes of cricket! Back to study with lots of mental resistance from all kids. Now since each strip is of equal size, its area could also be found by dividing the whole flag area by 3. But then, 12*8/3 didn't match with 2.66*12!! Why?! What if we calculated 2.6666*12?? Which is bigger among 2.66 and 2.6666??

Thus it continued. With an increasing demand for cricket! :D But then there was no cricket since Tushar and Mahesh and Irfan didn't pay attention during the study time. No one student can be separated from the class. If even one student does something "bad", the entire class will have to face the consequences. Unity!

During the second study time, Tushar and Irfan had an argument which broke into a violent fight. Terrible. All the way back to Patil Estate we tried convincing them both...

P.S.: Dhananjay left early. But he had fun. New volunteer in the making?? ;-)
27/12/09: What is meant by identity?
-"Olakh".

How would you identify yourselves within Patil Estate?
-By our names! Simple!

Just outside Patil Estate? Say, at BC?
-"Mahesh, from Patil Estate."

Correct! Anywhere in Pune?
-"Priti, from Patil Estate, Shivajinagar."

Right. Outside Pune?
-"Pooja, from Pune."

Right! What if you go out of Maharashtra?
-"Akshay, from Maharashtra."

Good. Imagine that you have achieved excellence in your chosen field from some big institutions in India and now you've been invited outside India, to say America, or Australia, or some such country. Then?
-"Poonam, from India."

Let's suppose that going out of the Earth will not be easily possible in the coming decade. :) So we'll have to end our questionnaire with the question given above. So now, what is it that associates a primary identity to your name in this world?
-"India."

I see. If India is so important, let's check what all you know about her.
National anthem?
-"Yup!"
Our flag?
-"Of course, yes!"
What do you know about our flag?
-"3 colours, their meaning, the wheel in between, its meaning, ..."
Haa! We all learnt it in primary school. Tell me something that all the smart kids in 7th, 8th and 9th std may know! :)
-"Well... Um... That..."
OK OK. Tell me, what if I wish to make a flag of my own? I go to a cloth store. Then? What do I ask for at the store?
-"Oh! How much cloth?! Well! The length and breadth of the flag! I think one of it is 12 or something..."
12?! OK good! Let's say the other one is 2/3rd of 12. So how much is it??
------

From here it all started. And went on till finding the area of the flag, finding the cost of the cloth given the cost per unit area, and went on till a homework problem in which the dimensions and area of each of the 3 strips were to be found.

I hate to begin the class with "Today we'll learn some geometry..."
:)
20/12/09: Geometry. Area. Wanted to cover some basics of these. But Mahesh, Tushar and Priti, the only attendants of the class, went like- What's this Didii, we went to such an interesting outing yesterday and you don't even wish to know about it???!
:) :) :)

Thus let them talk about the TCS event. And talk they did!! There was only one rule from my side- If you wish to tell me about the event, you'll have to give me every possible minute detail! If you stop in between, I'll start teaching geometry!

Thus they explained it all. Asked them to draw a graph of the place they visited, so that they understand proportions, distances, orientation, etc. :)


26/12/09: Photo time! Kids enjoyed all the event photos till date on Krunal's laptop, rendered by none other than Shrikant!

I had to attend Dad's programme. So me and Asim left within an hour. Shrikant and Krunal continued the class by reading out some interesting article on the laptop for some time; since it was really difficult to keep the kids away from the laptop.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

12/12/09: Zarna came!

Revise! We tried revising the things done in recent past. As always, it was a task to bring the kids into study-mode from the game of "Aandhalii koshimbiir"!

They still have great difficulty in understanding fractions. I mean, they can do the typical textbook problems well; but anything put up even slightly differently makes them go blank sometimes!

Revised the banking concepts, interest, rate of interest, etc. Solved some simple problems posed differently. Tried to learn percentages and fractions through "chapatis" (ardhii chapati, chatkor chapati, 50% chapati, 30% chapati, etc).


13/12/09: Lohgad trip. Chhuttii given to the teacher by students.


19/12/09: Chhuttii to the teacher again. Kids went for TCS event. Conducted batch3 class. This was great fun!

Full of inventive steps to keep up the spirits fo the kids! Will write more about this, later!