FLOCKS and GROVES in DELHI LAKE
KING SWAN : NIMISH RAJA [Tel.: 0-9990001985]
FLOCK: PARVARISH - THE MUSEUM SCHOOL
GROVE: SWANS, Delhi
'The Museum School' is an education model developed by OASiS, Bhopal, for academically and economically impoverished children from urban slums. The model collaborates with Museums, making them centres for education, and teaching the children using the working models and exhibits of the Museums as teaching aids. It is a learning experience for the SWANS as well, as they try to teach the concepts to the children without any books. It gives immense satisfaction to see the unfortunate children grab the opportunity to absorb the knowledge of the world.
SWANS are implementing The Museum School model at the National Museum of Natural History for a group of children from Salaam Balak Trust's Shelter Home. Presently in a weekend mode, classes are held at NMNH every Sunday 2:30 pm -4:30 pm.
Join us to have the most satisfying experience of your life. ......Click Here for Photos.......
FLOCK LEADER: K Prasad Rao, [Tel. No.: 0-9958992652]
(SWANS): Manisha Bansal, Mukesh, Nimish Raja.
EXPERIENCE:
Since we have finished the assessment now we can group the kids, and accordingly will frame syllabus for their groups. But the framing the syllabus would require inputs from all our volunteers.
I believe if our volunteers can spare time on weekdays then its a great idea to start a separate activity of teaching english to the kids on weekdays, alongwith our regular weekly museum class. If enough number of volunteers (3-4) wish to volunteers for the weekdays classes we can talk to SBT formally about the activity. Meanwhile lets try if more people can join us.
Regarding Teachers' day celebration - how about holding a painting competition on 5th Sept. 2010. All the kids as well as volunteers will take part in it (Taare Zamein Par style)?
8th August, 2010
The session was canceled due to less number of volunteers and lack of preparedness.
Initially we planned for following :-
1 hour session on English - by Priyanjana and Ishita
1 hour session of teaching children National Anthem and telling them some history about Indian Freedom struggle as Independence Day is approaching - by Prasad and Mukesh.
But following reasons acted as deterrent :-
Unavailability of Priyanjana and Ishita as the new timings for their coaching classes is 1:30 PM - 5:30 PM (every Sunday)
Prasad and Mukesh were not able to prepare well.
So we decided to cancel the session as it would not have been very fruitful conducting it.
Action Items :-
1. As Priyanjana and Ishita will be not available for afternoon sessions from now onwards we should talk to SBT for conducting session in morning 10am - 12am.
2. If morning session is not possible then we will have to again work on increasing volunteer base as following is the Status of Volunteers :-
Nimish - Regular
Mukesh - Regular
Prasad - Regular ( Though, I would be not available on next two Sundays - i.e. 15th and 22nd)
Manisha - She would be busy for next few months as she is getting married. Let us all congratulate her and wish her a great life ahead.
Ishita & Priyanjana - will not be available on Sunday afternoon
Darshan and Manish-2 - They will take some time to join us back.
Amit, Namrata and Madhavi - They have volunteered before for Parvarish, Bhopal and have been introduced here by Nimish.
Please add if I have missed someone.
3. In case SBT finds Sunday morning sessions difficult then Ishita and her friends ( 4 in all) are willing very much to go to the SBT Shelter Home ( at Teez Hazari) and teach children on Weekdays. We should talk to Jha sir of SBT regarding this and help them in orgainising it. Going forward, I believe this can be good way to reach out to college volunteers as they are generally free on weekday evenings.
4. We still have to design detailed curriculum for children. Having completed the initial assessment of children we can go ahead and divide them in two groups and accordingly design syllabus for them.
We need to act swiftly on these action items to avoid any cancellation of sessions in future.
1 August, 2010
Volunteers Present - Manisha, Priyanjana, Prasad
The session started with a story narration for the kids by Manisha.
In parallel, I and Priyanjana completed their assessment by doing a one-to-one interaction with each of them.
Then we took them to show some museum exhibits. Manisha and Priyanjana explained them the water cycle, oxygen cycle, carbon cycle, food chain etc with the help of the exhibits.
Me and Priyanjana had some tough time in explaining children as we struggled with our bad Hindi.
Session ended with chips packets for the kids.
I and priyanjana also had a brief meeting at the end about making the session more organized and designing curriculum for the kids. We agreed that teaching English has be a priority seeing their interest in the subject and it will also help us in teaching other subjects.
18 July, 2010
It was an exciting session for the kids this Sunday as they were taken to the Shankar’s Doll’s Museum. After a brief introduction with the new volunteers (Amit, Saurav & Priyananda) the Museum visit began. It was a great fun for the kids as well as for the volunteers to explore the dolls from all over the world.
We also started with the assessment of kids one by one while they were exploring the dolls’ galleries. By the end of the session only 10 out of the 13 kids could be assessed and the remaining kids would be assessed in the next class. The session ended with ice-candies for the kids & the volunteers.
27th June, 2010
Volunteers Present - Prasad, Nimish, Vinit , Darshan, Ishita, Manisha-2
Yes guys we had 4 new volunteers :) :) :) ( Manisha-2 please spare me for using -2 as we already have one volunteer manisha and i dont want to use your sir names :) :))
Let me introduce them to you all. Vinit is a electronic engineer. Manisha-2 is a coordinator of a play school. Ishita and Darshan have completed their 1st year of B.Sc. Physics (Hons) from Delhi University.
Session - We had a fun-filled round of introduction of new volunteers and children. Then we divided the kids into two groups as per their level. One group was looked after by Manisha-2, Darshan and Prasad and other by Ishita, Vinit and Nimish.
Darshan and Manisha-2 taught kids by showing them Map of India - the neighboring countries of India and few states of northern India. As they had their notebooks with them they also wrote them in Hindi and English. Then we proceeded to test their writing skills of english and hindi alphabets. Then we ended the session by giving some homework to few of them.
The other group were teaching kids with map of world and globe. Ishita/Vinit/Nimish - Please update about the activities of the other group. The Second group was taught "Globe" "Oceans" & the Equator" by Ishita & Vinit. Kids made notes of these topics as welll as those covered during earlier sessions(Continents etc.).
After the session we all volunteers planned for further activities. Nimish also briefed them about the museum school concept and swans organization. We have decided to meet this Saturday for curriculum design at broad level. And we are all also waiting eagerly for Pradeep Sir visit on 4th July.
So now we have total 8 volunteers here in Delhi - Nimish, Mukesh, Manisha, Manisha-2, Ishita, Darshan, Vinit and Prasad.
All new volunteers please join googlegroup (swans-delhi@googlegroups.com) .
Natural History Museum authorities are cooperative and keen to help us. They are organizing a trip for these kids on 15th July. The trip will be sponsored by Govt. of India. The details are yet to be clarified. Most probably Ishita and Darshan would be accompanying kids as they are having their holidays.
20th June, 2010
We regret that no session was held this Sunday as all the volunteers were busy. We informed it in advance to SBT.
13th June, 2010
Volunteers Present - Prasad, Nimish
Children - Same 13 kids along with their Mentor Mr. Pramod
After a brief introduction of the kids with Nimish we started of with telling them about the earth. Then through Globe we told them the constituents of earth - land and water. Then we moved on to telling them about the continents, countries and all. By the end of the session all the kids were able to recite the names of all 7 continents.
We felt the need of notebooks so that the kids can also write. We had a word with their mentor and he assurred that kids would be carrying them along from next time. SBT is very cooperative and they seem to really very interested in this project of ours.
6 June, 2010
Volunteers present - Prasad, Manisha, Mukesh.
Children - 13 along with their mentor, 1 kid was being replaced by another one as he got a home :)
Children reached at 2:00pm at the center. They saw the 1st floor of the museum this time for approximately half hour with volunteers answering their curiousity questions. At 2:30, we had a hindi story reading session with kids. After story, we talked abstractly about science, scientist and started discussing the Thermometer as an invention. At 3:00 pm, a movie show on Elephants was screened at NMNH. it went long and kids got bored and were drowsy by the time it ended. After the show, we discussed it with the kids, had a quick chit chat with them to take them out of their boredom, and ended the day with mango drinks.
So far, so good :) But we have our list of challenges:
Scarcity of Volunteers - We are in dire need of volunteers to run the current activity smoothly and to work out the execution on the plans for a full-fledged 6 days a week school.
Funds - short term - We need funds for refreshments, stationery.
23 May, 2010
volunteers present - Prasad, Manisha, Mukesh
No. of Children - 13 along with their mentor.
Profile of children -
Age group 10-15 years.
some of them have started their formal school from this acadmeic year itself, rest are currently being taught inhouse at SBT. School standard are class 4th - class 8th.
All of them understand spoken hindi, 6-7 can read Hindi proficiently, 1 of them is good in reading English. Their skills to write are yet to be gauged.
Children reached at NMNH after 2:30. After a brief session of introdution with the kids, we took them to a movie show(wildlife of Asia) organised by NMNH from 3:00pm - 3:30 pm. Kids enjoyed the show very much. After the show, they roamed around in the museum for a while and saw the models depicted there. Volunteers were present to answer their queries in the best possible way. After a while, we discussed the show and the learnings they got from it. We ended the session at 4:00pm with ice-candies for the kids.
23rd April 2010
The first session of Museum School - Delhi was held on 23rd April from 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM at National Museum of Natural History.
There were 13 children in all provided by Salam Balak Trust from there two centers Apna Ghar in Pahar Ganj and DMRC Children Home in Tees Hazari.
The Second Session was scheduled on 30th April but due to some logistics issue at Salam Balak Trust the children were not able to come to Museum. So the next session is likely to be held on coming Sunday.
We are now looking for increasing our Volunteer Base.
You can reach me at +91-9958992652 or Mukesh at +91-9911626739
Manisha and Mukesh would add more on activities we conducted on 23rd.