Effect of the Children committee in schools:

Tiffin committee member distributing biscuits & sweets

Swanirvar runs four Primary schools in the following four villages- Chandalati(I-IV), Fatullapur (I-IV), Andharmanik(I-IV) and Matia (I-II) . There are more than 450 students in these four schools. We have at least 8 types of children committees in our schools. These students committees with responsibility for 1) cleanliness, 2) sports, 3) water, 4) library, 5) notice, 6) Sahitya Sabha , 7) mid day meal , 8) seed bank etc. The evaluation committee (also a kind of children committee) looks after the activities of all the committees. In the monthly assessment meeting (hold on last Saturday of each month) the president and the secretary of evaluation committee sit down together with the secretaries and assistant secretaries of all the committees to discuss the works done by every committee. The other students of all classes present there. Secretaries of all the committees read out the observations and monthly assessment report made by the committee. They point out various information, success, failure and opinion based on their learning. The students of other committee do not always agree with the secretaries. So sometime they are in debate among themselves and many suggestions and different opinions come out. The secretary of evaluation committee takes notes and later resolutions are being taken. A sense of co-operation, leadership, decision making skill, judgment skill, democracy and reporting skill develop among students are being seen. We have been able to introduce such children’s committees in 19 govt. primary schools (14 Primary and 5 SSK centre).

        The effects of these committees on students are being seen. Many of our children are now studying in High schools and they are doing many remarkable works beside their regular study. They are not only showing their group activities in schools but also in their localities. Some of them have became natural leaders in their societies. Here are some examples…
        Safiul Hassan an ex –student of Chandalati Swanirvar Primary school. At present he is in class-V at Mandra High School. Now he has given the responsibilities to control and manages daily prayer of all students.

Library committee in book distribution

        Rittika Biswas, ex student of Magurkhali and now studying in class IX at Rudrapur Radha Ballav High School. She had an active role in the children committee. She found that all the washrooms of her present school are dirty and not being cleaned regularly. She persuaded some of her classmates to form a cleaning committee. After that, they met their principal and asked for some detergents and some utensils also requested him to introduce dustbin for each room. The principal immediately accepted them and had purchased dustbins for the entire schools.

Reported by,
Prosanto Mondal
Mob: +91 9732829202

SWANIRVAR IN EDUCATION: Dedicated English Class room in our Primary school...

SWANIRVAR IN EDUCATION: Dedicated English Class room in our Primary school...: "From 2005, Margarate Flanagan, a retired British school teacher was working with us. Her main role was to improve English teaching in our pr..."

Dedicated English Class room in our Primary schools:

From 2005, Margarate Flanagan, a retired British school teacher was working with us. Her main role was to improve English teaching in our primary schools as well as with our network Govt. Primary schools. She and our teachers had done many experiments in these schools on improvement of pedagogy on English teaching. We had developed TLM based teachings, used more pictures, chart posters and also audio visual study materials.

Based on these experiences and learning, 6 small booklets had been published. These booklets have been found most effective and now are being used in our schools and also in some other NGO schools and Govt. primary schools. Swanirvar teachers and 10 local Govt primary teachers were engaged with Margarate in this educational research project.
In 2010, we felt the need of a separate English class room in schools. This was experimentally started in our 3 primary schools. The object of this was as follows:
1. Display of pictures drawing by the children in the Art & craft class
2. Display of Work Cards made by Teachers in big letters, Class-I-IV
3. Pictures chart hanging on the wall-Fruits chart, Animals chart, Birds chart, Flowers Chart, Vegetables Chart, Number Chart, colour chart, Human body chart, etc
4. Display of first letter of a word with various items made from this letter.
5. Different pictures drawn by children and paste on the wall
6. TV,VCD, Box for audio-visual program
7. Numerous numbers of TLMs for class I-IV and worksheet, so that any student can work at any time.

Effects:

On Children:

1. An environment has been developed in that room. The colourful decoration has attracted the children. English learning is now joyful learning.

2. Self learning: student are now coming by their own wishes, playing and learning with use of TLMs

3. This has been found more effective for the weak and medium children. They are spending more times in this room. Colouring the cards, doing hand on activities and gradually getting out from the phobia of English as a foreign language.

4. As the students of I-IV are coming in that room for learning and they are spending times with learning materials. Students also developing new ideas and prospective.

On Teacher:

Our teacher, Shyama in Magurkhali School

1. Here teacher is just a facilitator. More group activities.

2. He has many choices with huge TLMs and other study materials.
3. Continuously getting new ideas and more interactions with students.
4. Better Class room management.

Reported by:
Gopal & Prosanto

SWANIRVAR IN EDUCATION: Impacts of ‘Sahitya Sabha’ in Swanirvar Primary Sc...

SWANIRVAR IN EDUCATION: Impacts of ‘Sahitya Sabha’ in Swanirvar Primary Sc...: "BACKGROUND In 2000, 13 teachers and supervisor of Swanirvar's three primary schools visited Santiniketan on an exposure trip orga..."

Impacts of ‘Sahitya Sabha’ in Swanirvar Primary Schools:

BACKGROUND

           In 2000, 13 teachers and supervisor of Swanirvar's three primary schools visited Santiniketan on an exposure trip organized by Bratin Chatterjee of Patha Bhavan there. During this trip the teachers witnessed a Sahitya Sabha - a cultural evening organized and conducted by the students where they do all kinds of performances mostly based on their own compositions. Swanirvar teachers were very impressed and after coming back they started a similar thing. In year 2000-2001 it was held in two villages. The success and enthusiasm was beyond expectations. In fact many villagers were flabbergasted seeing Class IV girls and boys conducting the total proceedings. In 2001-2002 this was held in all the 3 villages where Swanirvar has its primary schools. Meanwhile Swanirvar has been trying to build all kinds of "connections" with the govt. school system locally. This year (2010-11) Swanirvar had organized 12 Sahitya Sabhas in its own Primary schools and also had organized 10 such events in Govt Primary schools.

Impacts:
From, 2001, Swanirvar’s teachers had taken a number of trainings on composing ‘poetry, poems and short stories, makings stories from pictures and movies, etc. They got trainings from Shikshamitra and other famous organizations. After the trainings, the teachers had guided their students to write their feelings. Getting enthusiasm, the students composed their own stories, poems etc and presented these in the Sahitya Sabhas. Gradually, some of our students made remarkable progress in their writings!! Most of them had shown their creativities in high schools, too.
          Musumi Parveen, studied in our primary school at Chandalati(1999-2005). She wrote many poems and short stories and was a regular performer of sahitya sabha. Presently, she is in class X and is very famous in her school for her excellent writing and debating abilities. Most of the time, she represent her school in the inter school debate and short speech competition. She is also a regular article writer of local magazines.

         Avishekh Mondal, Diya Mondal, Mamul Hassan, Milan Halder, Sardhendu Chatterjee, Mijanur Hossain, Piyali Biswas etc ( our ex students of Fatullapur Primary and Magurkhali Primary) are doing well in their schools.

         They are not scoring highest marks in their classes. But, they are topper in debate, painting, drama and writing articles and composing poetry sessions.

Reported by:

Prosanto Mondal

Supervisor, Primary

Cross review visit 2010-11

        

Last year, 17 Govt. teachers came for a peer review process to see what we are doing in our schools and they were highly pleased and praised us. This year 25 SSK teachers, 35 NGO-teachers and 6 Govt. teachers came to visit our primary schools as well as some of our partner Govt. schools where we are continuously providing our inputs in the form trainings, workshops and seminars. They took extensive notes and gave their opinions in the meeting on the classroom management and pedagogy (Bengali, Maths, English and EVS).They saw group works, classroom management, use of TLMs, teacher’s work plans, assembly, children’s committees and their roles, l village maps making and question-answer sessions.
          This year, 112 teachers and officials from Govt Primary, SSK and NGO ( BSSK, South 24 Parganas, Pradan, Purulia, Goal funded Right Track) run Schools came to visit Swanirvar’s schools.

           After visiting the schools they all sat together at Swanirvar to discuss everything they had seen. They also discussed all family and school relationships, teacher’s attitude towards weak children and classroom management. The visiting teachers suggested for some changes and praised this new system. Two of them wanted to implement the Swanirvar’s process in their own schools.

Reported By,
Prosanto Mondal,
Supervisor, Swanirvar

Field Trip to Taragunia Mintu Park,Baduria 2010-11

        The Field Trip is an important annual event in Swanirvar schools. Every year both teachers and students sit together to discuss where they would go for their field visit. They discussed about the group works that the students would carry out at that trip. This year they decided that the students of class I&II would visit their local area and the students of class III &IV would visit Taragunia Mintu Park .The visiting places are mentioned below. So, 382 students of our schools visited Taragunia Mintu Park, Rudrapur Park and Gangarati Bill with their teachers.

        The students of Class I& II (from Andharmanik and Chandalati schools) went to Rudrapur Park and Gangerati respectively. There they played sports games for about one and a half hours. After that they made charts showing living and non-living things, diesel cars and petrol cars, the collection and analysis of leaves and floating and sinking things. Next the students drew group pictures following a discussion among the group members. The students (I &II) of Fatullapur went to Taragunia Mintu Park and did the same work.

        The students (III and IV) of all the above villages and Matia went to Taragunia mintu Park. They enjoyed the swings, slides, a small zoo and the boating pond. They visited an interesting museum in the park. Then they drew different types of pictures.

Lastly they took a delicious picnic lunch at the Park.After that they were busy chatting among themselves and explored the Park one more time before returning home.   

Reported by,
Prosanto Mondal,
Primary Supervisor.