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Class Date | Title | Body | Modified |  | _Temp | Created |
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| | Culture:
Aroosh was the vishesh vidyarthi and did a good job with the Bihar presentation.
Next we focussed on the annual day preparation. There were still some kids who had not identified the character that they will play and were supposed t get back to me. Folks from non hindi speaking families must get back to us ASAP if they want help converting their pieces.
I have asked the students to practice their part at least 20 times in front of a grown up who understands hindi.
The culture teacher will not be in on 5/13 but the Written Hindi teacher Raju Ji will be asking the students to read out their work. (Thank You Raju Ji).
Vishesh Vidyarthi is Sushant and based on class logistics today, his presentation can be covered or done next time.
Thanks! | | | | | | | Culture
Hello –
Most important thing currently is preparation for the annual day.
1. Write Up: All students were requested to identify their favorite Indian hero and write a few lines. We hope that all students have this ready tomorrow. All lines must be in Hindi and hopefully the kids have tried it out at least a few times at home. For families that do not speak Hindi at home, please write the lines in English and we will help convert it to Hindi. We are expecting extremely clear diction that is appropriate for 4th graders. We will also practice this at Gurukul. Feel free to add a touch of humor if you can.
2. Need Confirmations: Most people have selected their hero I think. Some of the students had mentioned that they will send an email to me last week finalizing who they would like to portray (Esha? and Nitisha?). I haven’t heard back. Students who were not in the class please look at last week’s review to see what all there must be in the lines.
3. Dressing Up: Parents, please try to think of ideas on how you would like to dress up your child to portray that character. If you have less time (like all of us) you can still make it simple and convey the message. Remember, annual day is on June 3rd.
4. Always Need Volunteers: Any parents who are good at arranging such events please let us know. We can use all the creative energy we can to make this a fun and memorable event.
Vishesh Vidyarthi: Mayhul did a nice presentation covering North India last week. Next week’s presentation will be by Aroosh Kumar. 3 more students will be left after that – Sushant, Tushar and Archisha. If you will be ready with your presentations earlier we could do 2 or 3 in the same class. Please let me know.
| | | | | | | Culture
Class Picture in Indian clothes on 4/29:
There will be class pictures tomorrow from 12:30-12:45PM. The kids must dress up in Indian attire. I will email another picture that we took informally last month.
Review - 4/22:
Anuj was the vishesh vidyarthi on 4/22 and did a great performance covering Bihar. Before that Abishek had done a presentation on 4/8 covering Tamil Nadu. Both were very nice presentations and as always we had a nice classroom discussion after that. Mayhul will be the vishesh vidyarthi for 4/29.
Annual Day:
We discussed the annual day plan and here is what we are doing for at least one part. This will be in line with one of their homeworks – favorite Indian hero. The kids will be expected to dress up (as much as possible; for Gandhi it could be a simple bamboo stick and a pair of glasses (without lenses)) like their favorite hero and say a few lines in First Person. This must be in all Hindi and total time taken should be around a minute (once I get the draft, we will try and cut it short to fit this time limit). Here is what we discussed in the class regarding the content (an example for Gandhi appears in parenthesis):
1. 1-2 sentences. Name and when they were born (born in 1869, 12 years after the first war of independence).
2. May be 3-5 sentences. What else was going on around that time in India and in the world mainly America (India was fighting for its freedom. There were several methods used – revolutionary by Bhagat Singh, Subhash Bose etc., England as the imperialists were backing out of some countries. A little about the world war, Hitler, Americas contribution, Ford’s first car. I know this is a lot but choose 2-3 things and write it in Hindi.
3. 2-3 sentences. Tell us about their biggest achievement. (Dandi March, non-cooperation movement and finally independence)
4. 2-3 sentences. Tell us one or two lines of what they would like to say to the current generation. Assume that they are traveling in time and visiting Gurukul 4B! A message for kids / parents or both.
Other points regarding Annual Day:
1. Please let us know if you can help us with the annual day. Especially with ideas to dress kids up or anything you can think of.
2. Please send me who this person will be for your kid. If they want they can change their hero (from what they chose in the assignment) since now they will be enacting them.
3. Might be a great idea to showcase regional leaders, star people instead of choosing very common ones like Gandhi etc.
4. For practice, we will have the kids read their lines out aloud and with confidence. So please try to have them practice at home!
Thanks to the parent volunteers. Let us know if you have any questions.
| | | | | | | Culture:
Abishek will be next week's vishesh vidyarthi. Please look at the calendar (spreadsheet) to see other dates for other kids. Here is a list of scheduled VV:
Abishek 4/8/2012
Anuj 4/22/2012
Mayhul 4/29/2012
Aroosh Kumar 5/6/2012
Sushant 5/13/2012
Tushar 5/20/2012
Archisha 5/27/2012
I will try sending out an individual email to let parents know.
We talked about the current tithi based on the lunar calendar. We are going to make this a regular feature. We then talked about the festivals around the corner - Ram Navmi, Mahavir Jayanti, Good Friday, Easter. WE talked about Mahavir Jain and a little about Janism and their focus on non-violence.
Finally, we talked about the Zakir Hussain concert in Seattle. We talked about the instruments that were used there - Ghatam, Dholak, Bansuri, Saarangi etc. We showed three Youtube videos of tabla with Sarangi, bansuri and santoor to showcase the "Jugalbandi" concept and to hopefully generate some interest in the students.
We are still working on the script for the annual day skit. Will have something concrete by next week.
Thanks to Sachin Harwalkar (Esha’s dad) for volunteering. His (and all parent volunteers’) contribution in the class is appreciated. Thanks as always, also to Anuja Ji (Samin's Mom) – our LPV for consistently looking after the interests of 4B.
Spoken:
The spoken hindi homework is for the kids to write 2 sentences each in the following sentence structure
This is based on the jingles that they learnt in the last lesson
The sentences would be simple 3 or 4 word sentences based on
मैं verb/noun हूं
तू verb/noun है
तुम verb/noun हो
आप verb/noun हैं
वह verb/noun है (male) e.g vah patla hai
वह verb/noun है (female) e.g. vah patli hai
वे verb/noun हैं
हम verb/noun हैं | | | | | | | Culture:
1. Nitisha was the vishesh vidyarthi and did a great job. We always have a healthy and interactive discussion arond the presentation.
2. We also talked about Ugadi, Yugadi, Gudhi Padwa and how it is celebrated in different regions. We had parents and teachers contribute as well.
3. We are still looking for a script for the annual day. But we have decided to do a play.
4. Regarding homework, the students need to identify their heroes. We jotted down names and added them to the spreadsheet in the class.
5. Please make sure the kids are dressed as per the colors of the national flag tomorrow.
Reading and Written
We finished the Lesson 15: Hathi aur Darzee story. | | | | | | | Culture
Esha was the Vishesh Vidyarthi and did a nice presentation. In all presentations, we stop at each slide and discuss all topics in the class. Next week it is Nitisha's turn to be the vishesh vidyarthi. Esha's dad was in the class to attend and also as a parent volunteer. Thanks to him and AnujaJi for volunteering in the class. If your child is presenting on a certain day, parents are welcome to volunteer as well.
We will most likely be doing a skit for the annual day presentation and will begin preparations next week. We are working on what script to use etc.
Please forget that next week children need to dress up as their favorite sportsperson.
The food drive is still on and students’ families are requested to donate whatever they can. We hope that all students can bring at least one thing.
Students also need to finalize their favorite hero by next week. As a reminder all students need to identify two of their favorite heroes. One who is Indian (past, present) and one who is non-Indian. The presentation is due in mid-April but students need to identify their hero by next week.
Reading and Written
We finished the Das Naukar story. Everyone got a chance to read a few sentences from the story. Overall, a good job but a few kids are still getting stuck on basic things like maatraas and will have to practice reading at home. We started the Darzee story and will complete next week.
| | | | | | | Culture
Archan was the vishesh vidyarthi and did a nice presentation covering Gujarat. We then covered a little about elections in India - the two houses of parliament, how elections are held since recently elections were held in UP.
The annual day will be in the first week of June and we were looking for ideas of what to do. We are inclined towards doing a skit and will brain storm ideas. Parents are requested to discuss this with their kids and we will take it further in the next class.
As part of the next homework, each student has been asked to choose two heros. One from India and one from outside India. Then we would ask them to write a few things about each - a little bit about the person, why he is the favorite etc. We might have a mini competition in the class. The homework is due on April 1st - around 3 weeks from now.
Please remember to wear your ethnic clothes on Sunday.
Also, note that the food drive is still on and the winner gets a pizza party! Make sure to put a label with "4B" on your donations.
Thank You to Anisha Gautam Ji for volunteering. Esha will be the vishesh vidyarthi next week. | | | | | | | FYI: The latest and greatest information for the class review is always available in this location. To make things easier please book mark this site and try to visit it a couple of times in the week.
Thank You Vaishali Ji and Anuja Ji for volunteering and contributing in the class.
Written
We read the story about the dog "Sheru". Homework is answering all the questions at the back of this story. We also got into reading the first few lines of the Holi poetry, but didnt finish it.
Spoken
Culture
Ananya was the vishesh vidyarthi and gave a nice presentation covering Delhi and Bengaluru a bit. Archan will be the vishesh vidyarthi next week. Also, based on the changes in the last few weeks, I have tried to change dates of vishesh vidyarthi presentations. Please take a look on the spreadsheet and let me know if that works.
Today we went a bit over the Jhansi Rani poem that was demoed last week and went over the first two lines. We then discussed Holi. We discussed the various reasons why it is celebrated including the Holika / Prahlaad story, Spring celebration, harvest celebration, Krishna/ Radha and Kaamdeva event. I also showed a diagram mapping the lunar months to the solar months and the actual seasons. We then had various parents discuss their Holi experiences. Please talk to the kids about Holi and how you celebrated when you were younger.
No culture homework for next week.
We are going to start the reading log soon. Please start adding the time spent reading a hindi book.
| | | | | | | A corrected version of the mid term results was sent today. Some of the spoken Hindi scores have been corrected in the new version.
Written
- We went over the "Chu Chu Raja" homework.
- We went over the "Titali" poetry and assigned the questions at the end as the homework.
- We started with the "Mera Mitra" story.
Spoken
Culture
There was a demo last time. The youth wing of Gurukul rendered the poem "Jhansi Ki Rani" by Subhadra Kumari Chauhan. No homework for culture.
Vishesh Vidyarthi on 3/4 will be Ananya Rao. | | | | | | | It was great to meet the parents and get your feedback. There are some small issues in the report cards that need to be fixed. We are working on that and will send you the new ones ASAP. We tried to ensure that all 3 teachers get an opportunity to talk with as many parents while managing the class at the same time. Thanks to Kalindi Ji for handling the class to fill the gaps.
Spoken:
There was no spoken class due to PTA meeting.
Culture:
In culture we went over the questions from the culture test. I asked the students to look at the questions they got wrong in the test and write them down again. This is due in the next Gurukul class on 3/4 (26th is a day off for Gurukul).
Written:
Home work for written Hindi is pages 49 and 50 (the questions on the Choo-Choo Chuha story).
Class on 19th: Ananya will be the vishesh vidyarthi on the 19th. Since there is also a demo tomorrow, we might need to use some time from the written hindi class to cover Ananya's presentation. The demo is on Rani Laxmi bai. We have covered this a bit in the culture class in the 1857 rebellion context so hopefully the students will remember.
| | | | | | | Report Cards emails have been sent out. Look forward to meeting you all on Sunday.
10:30:00 10:40:00 Abishek
10:40:00 10:50:00 Ananya
10:50:00 11:00:00 Anuj
11:00:00 11:10:00 Anushka
11:10:00 11:20:00 Archan
11:20:00 11:30:00 Archisha
11:30:00 11:40:00 Aroosh Kumar
11:40:00 11:50:00 Break
11:50:00 12:00:00 Esha
12:00:00 12:10:00 Isha
12:10:00 12:20:00 Mayhul
12:20:00 12:30:00 Nitisha
12:30:00 12:40:00 Rishi
12:40:00 12:50:00 Samin
12:50:00 1:00:00 Sruthi
1:00:00 1:10:00 Sushant
1:10:00 1:20:00 Tushar
1:20:00 1:30:00 Vidha | | | | | | | Mid Term
The mid-term evaluation focussing on spoken and written hindi was held. The scores will be discussed in the PTA session on 2/12. In the rest of the class we did a quiz to revise some of the Culture stuff we have done in the past.
Next Week
Next week there will be an objective type written test (yes one more test!) on all things covered in the culture class so far. Test will be for 30 minutes and the children will have to answer 20 questions. Sruti will be the vishesh vidyarthi on 2/5. We will have 10 minutes for her presentation just before the test begins. Samin was the vishesh vidyarthi in the last class and did a great presentation that covered the tradition and customs of Kerela.
Goodbye NidhiJi / Welcome RajuJi
We are sad to see Nidhi Ji leave Gurukul. She is moving back to India with her family. We wish her the very best. On the other hand we have a new hindi teacher who you all have already met in the last two classes - Raju Matta. We all welcome him and look forward to working with him through the rest of the Gurukul year. | | | | | | | Thanks Hari (Abishek's dad) and Anuja (Samin's mom) for helping out as parent volunteers. Next two weeks are off so Merry Xmas and Happy New Year to all students and families. All students are requested to arrive before 11 AM going forward. We will be calling out names of those who do not come in time :-).
Culture:
Vidha was the vishesh vidyarthi and gave a nice presentation on Uttar Pradesh. Samin will be the vishesh vidyarthi on the 8th. Parents are welcome to volunteer the day that their child is the vishesh vidyarthi. We'd like them to share some things as well to the class.
We discussed the Mughal period. We talked about key rulers, architecture, and land marks. All students seemed very interested in learning about them. I asked them to watch 2 movies from that period Mughal-e-Azam and Jodha Akbar. Parents are encouraged to talk about this significant period in India's history with the students. Home work was to pick up a book (Amar Chitra Katha like book) from the library and read it over the holiday. Or read a book that they have.
Also, please keep looking at the spreadsheet to see homework submissions. Some students showed me the homework on Sunday. If their status is not updated, please let me know and I will update it.
Written:
We did complete Path- 5 (Meri Dadiji) from sec-1. Also we did go through the homework corrections. Please review those and practice at home and pay attention on your writing too. We briefly reviewed Exercise- 4 from Sec-2 which is due for next class.
Homework: Exercise of Path- 5(Meri Dadiji) from sec-1.
Exercise-4 from Sec-2.
Surprize Activity: We will have an activity related to Vishesh Vidyarthi who will be Samin next week.
Merry Christmas: Wish you all a very blessed Christmas with lots of presents. So, be nice to your family as Santa is watching you!!!! Ho Ho Ho!!! Thanks. | | | | | | | Thank You Bharti (Mayhul's mom) and Anuja (Samin's mom). Vidha, who was the Vishesh vidyarthi yesterday will again be the vishesh vidyarthi next week since she did not get a chance to present due to the demo.
Written Hindi
Last week we didn't have any class so no new homework was given. Please make sure if you havn't finished Exercises of Path-3( Subaha ho gai) Page 34-35 of Section 1 and Exercise 1-3 of Section-2( Page 1-6), its a good time to catch up.
Also I really appreciate students efforts in submitting one page of Varanmala. Bonus points were given.
Culture:
There was a Tabla demo. All students have been asked to write 5 points about the tabla. We also did a quick revision of the prarthana. Vidha, who was the Vishesh vidyarthi yesterday will again be the vishesh vidyarthi next week. I have entered the names of students and the day when they will be the vishesh vidyarthi in the spreadsheet. It will be great if parents can confirm and let me know if those dates work for them. Also, it will be very nice if students / parents can email me their presentations in advance. | | | | | | | Thanks to Sruthi's mom for volunteering. Next week's class volunteer is Mayhul's mom.
Anushka was the vishesh vidyarthi. Next week's vishesh vidyarthi is Vidha.
Spoken Hindi:
Enclosed is the slide PPT for the spoken hindi class on 12/04.
The topic for this week;s conversation series was birthdays. Students went over key words and later translated sentences (conversations) from English to Hindi. The PPT has the key words along with sentences and their Hindi translations.
Written Hindi:
Review- So far we are done till Chapter 1 - 4 (Billi Mausi) in Section -1 and Exercise 1-2 in Section-2. Most of the students are updated and those who are not finished, please make sure you complete all the exercises for the ones mentioned above.
We started Chapter-5 (Meri Dadi ji) and still continuing it.
Culture:
We went over last week’s content. Anushka then gave her presentation. It was another stellar presentation for the Vishesh Vidyarthi program. Today we talked about last week’s India-related events, which was dominated by Dev Anand’s demise. We spoke about the earlier Bollywood era, the other stars around that time. Also the kids saw a video of Dev Anand. The idea was to give them exposure to some golden Hindi songs in a formal environment. Finally we talked about some symbols – swastika, cross, Aum, Khanga etc. I have uploaded a Symbols document if the kids are interested in seeing it.
Announcements:
1. The latest and greatest class review and homework will always be available on the SharePoint site. Sometimes there are delays by some teachers so with the SharePoint we want to make sure that if a teacher is ready with the review it is available to parents ASAP so please keep checking the site if you do not see an email from us.
2. Note the culture assessment will happen on 1/15/2012. The class before that will be a revision class and that will happen in the form of a quiz. Everything taught in previous classes will be covered.
3. The corrected homework was returned to all students with comments. Please note the status of homework submission on the spreadsheet (link provided on bottom right of the 4B SharePoint page).
4. Vidha will be the vishesh vidyarthi next week. I will soon be adding names of all students based on alphabetic order for the vishesh vidyarthi program.
| |  | | | | | Culture updated; Written and spoken Hindi to be updated.
Culture Review:
Rishi was the vishesh vidyarthi and gave an excellent presentation on Tamil Nadu. In the next class (12/4), Anushka will be the vishesh vidyarthi. Parents of the vishesh vidyarthis - a presentation like PPT with pictures is preferrable so that all kids can be interested. If you have a presentation ready please send it to me in advance. Also, I have updated names of students for the next few weeks. Let me know if you have any questions on that.
We talked about people born in the week of Nov 14. This included Jawahar Lal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rani Laxmibai. In context of rani Laxmibai we discussed the first war of independence and a little history about imperialism in India. How it started with the east india company and how slowly it became imperialistic in nature. We also talked a little about Nehru and Indira Gandhi.
No homework for this week. The spreadsheet has been updated by children who have submitted their homework. If you have submitted something and your name does not appear, please ping me. Happy Thanks giving to everyone and see you the week after Thanksgiving! | | | | | | | Spoken Hindi:
We revised the key words from the last class and later discussed new sentences on a phone conversation. The scenario was planning a trip together over phone
Following are the sentences which were translated from English to Hindi:
› Hello, how are you?
› I'm fine, Thank you! And, how are you?
› I'm pretty good! Where is your father?
› My father is out of town.
› Any other member in your family?
› My grand-father and grand-mother stay with us.
› Which way to the airport?
› Take exit 2C on I 90 .
› How much time it takes to reach there?
› Approximately 30 minutes.
› How is the weather out there?
› There are chances of rain.Please carry an umbrella
› OK, thank you, see you at the airport
We could not go through the homework from the previous class as students did not have material available. Starting this week, all the material will be send over email apart from having it posted on the homework site.
Written Hindi:
Review: Students completed " Path-3 Subaha ho gai" with Induji in the previous class. They could complete half the Exercise for Path -3.
New Classwork: I started from "Path-4 Billi Mausi". Students read in hindi and translated in english. They are doing great!! They wrote the meanings in their workbook only to help them to rhyme later. We went through the exercises of Path-4 briefly if they needed any help.
We went to the last section of the workbook-- Bhaag- 2 (Section - 2). There are exercises to practice that we overlooked as they are part of the homework too.
Culture:
- Review: First reviewed last week’s class. We talked about the Mahabali and Vishnu story and tried to clarify the differences from the Vali-Sugreev story that was told last week. Also, discussed events of the week. We talked about Bhupen Hazarika a little. I wanted to show a Bhupen Hazarika video but we were a little short of time today. That will be part of the homework.
- Announcements: A. Kids who turn in their homework early will get stars (marked on the spreadsheet). B. I have asked students visiting India, to make a photo journal. They could talk about places visited, Family, Differences, New learnings, Favorite things, Not-so-favorite things. The more the pictures the better! I will work with the student before they present. For students not visiting soon, if they wish, they can make a photo journal from previous pictures!
- Vishesh Vidyarthi: Isha gave a very detailed and commendable presentation. We had a good start to the vishesh vidyarthi program. Rishi has volunteered to do this next week and then Anoushka the week after. I will be updating the spreadsheet with others as well. Rishi’s parents, if you can send me the presentation beforehand that will be great to plan timing and make it most effective. I can also display that on the projector now that we have that figured out! A big thanks to AnujaJi for taking the video and for all her other help in the class!
- New topic: We covered the Indian number system. Lacs, crores, arabs vs. millions, billions. We did some exercises in the class for practice. Some homework is posted on this. We also showed the Indian currency system vs. the American system. The kids looked at the Indian rupee symbol.
| | | | | | | Written Hindi:
Children read the Chidiya (bird) story in their work books. It was good to see that most kids were able to read the story.
On to another note, I (Indu) am taking leave of absence for a few months due to several personal commitments. Ms. Nidhi is taking over the read and write Hindi part.
Spoken Hindi:
We did a recap of ouir learning so far on conversation. The kids had an opportunity to share their five hobbies via spoken Hindi sentences.
Culture Class:
We started by reviewing the Divali home work of students. Their homework was portrayed on a PowerPoint presentation that was displayed. The students then read out loud their homework. As and when we read, we kept discussing key points from their homework, both generic and specific. We also delved into other stories as we talked about it. I told the students the story of Sugreeva and Vali from Ramayana. We then looked at the map of India and looked at some statistics. We compared the population of US with India and also the population of some key Indian and US cities.
Some kids talked about it being ethnic dress day. I think this was for grades 1 through 3. Anyways, I mentioned that students could dress up in Indian clothes every week for Gurukul!
Vishesh Vidyarthi: We are starting the Vishesh Vidyarthi program from next week. Isha Kshirsagar will be our first vishesh vidyarthi. I simply asked the students to volunteer for now. But will come up with a more regular schedule soon. Here are the things that I would like the vishesh vidyarthi students to talk about in the culture class.
1. Talk about what their name means - first name and last name. (if their families are okay to talk about this)
2. Talk a little bit about the state from where there parents are from - name, language(s) spoken, demographics, little history, food items, major festivals, dance forms, music, famous people (sports or others), may be literacy rate, ppl under poverty line (a lot of this info can come from Wikipedia).
3. Also, if they can come up with a couple of surprise items about the state that no one knows that will be nice.
Test: I plan to do a quick test / assessment sometime end of December / early January. The topics will be everything that I have been covering in the class. I will try to make it a quick 15-20 minute objective test. The best way to prepare is that the parents keep talking about the topics covered in the class to ensure the kids remember.
Homework: No home work for this week. Except that students need to complete last times homework. I have set up a new workbook to the parent volunteer spreadsheet to track homework of the students. Click on Students in the lower left corner to see this tracker. | | | | | | | नमस्ते,
Last class was on 10/23. We had a short session on spoken Hindi and a substitute teacher for written Hindi. The sessions were cut short because we decorated dandiya sticks (we got hose only on 10/23) and we had a yoga session. Hope you all had a great Divali! It was great to see some of the students and parents at the Gurukul Divali party.
Here are more details:
Written Hindi:
We had a sub teacher. The new teacher read a book and then we moved on to decorating the dandiya sticks. InduJi should be back in class this week.
Spoken Hindi:
The theme of this week “hobby conversations” .
We started the session with a re-cap of the words we learnt during shopping conversations .This was followed by learning new Hindi words, based on these words we had a hobby conversations in Hindi.
Enclosed is the slide deck on the words and sentences
Culture:
We had a yoga session. Some kids were doing it seriously while others were having fun :). Some of the breathing exercises (Pranayama) are extremely easy and very good, so hopefully you can keep the conversation on. I will be covering this in the class as well.
Regards,
Teachers of 1C
| | | | | | | नमस्ते,
We thank Anuja (Samin's mom) and Rajiv (Sushant's dad) who were the parent volunteers on 10/16!
Here is a summary of what we did on 10/16.
Written Hindi:
Shweta Ji substituted for Induji. We thank her for her help.
Read Lesson 2 (Meri Paathshala), Covered Lesson 2 exercises. Homework is to complete the Lesson 2 exercises at home.
Spoken Hindi:
We revised the new Hindi words which were given as homework.
Using the new words we had Diwali shopping conversations (class was broken into two groups and were asked to translate the questions in Hindi). PPT of the spoken words are attached.
Going forward, we have planned series of conversations on specific topics/scenarios for example: Telephonic conversation in Hindi etc.
Culture:
We did a quick quiz on what we covered last week. We are starting a new section where the focus will be on each child. The idea is that understanding culture starts from understanding yourself. Each week one child will discuss their names and what it means. Also we will bring up the map of India and the child will talk about the state their parents are from in India, describe it, talk about the language, festivals, customs etc. We would like to have all children at least know the meanings of the names of all other children in their class by the end of the year. I will give out a list of who speaks when next week.
Topic of the day: Hindustani Music
Asked the children what kinds of music they learn. Children are learning the piano, flute, violin, Hindustani vocal, Carnatic vocal etc. We tried to set the environments by asking if anyone will volunteer to sing . Isha sang the sargam for us, which was very well sung. Anushka also sang Bhupali aaroh, avroh. We talked about how ragas are based on season, mood and time of the day. We briefly talked about thaats. The children talked about names of instrumentalists they know and names of some musical instruments. Children named the Sarod, Santoor, Sitar, Tabla etc. They also named Hari Prasad Chaurasia. We were not set up for videos this time but next class we will go through some videos on the concepts discussed this week.
Last week’s Homework: I received homework from Isha, Anushka, Rishi and Samin. There were some very good write ups and it was exactly what I was looking for. I plan to bring this up in the next class, project it and go through it in the class.
Next week: Next week there will be Yoga instead of the culture class.
regards,
Teachers of 4B | | | | | | | Namaste parents,
Ms. Indu will be out for the next two weeks. Ms. Shweta will be stepping in instead.
Parent volunteer: We thank Ananya's mother - Jyothi Rao for being the parent volunteer and helping out!
Written Hindi – Indu Tursa
In written Hindi, we, used creativity to come up with a story about Paathshala. Kids wrote several sentences about their schools and then pointed out which Matras they had used.
Spoken Hindi – Nitin Saxena
• Students who didn’t get an opportunity earlier to share their hindi story/poem , read out their stories to the class.
• We made note of few new (juicy) words from the stories and understood the meaning of it.
• We understood the meaning of new words (attached) and will be using them to have shopping conversations in Hindi in the upcoming class.
Culture – Ravi Acharya
We started with a quick revision of the previous week’s discussion points. Some of the points of discussion led to other topics. For example, while talking about 2nd October being Gandhi's B'day some kids knew that it was also Lal Bahadur Shastri's Birthday and so we started talking about Presidents and Prime Ministers. And so the government systems in India and the US. Here is more detail:
- Religions: Various religions in India and India as a secular nation.
- Sports: Students mentioned sports that are specific to India: Kho Kho, Kabaddi, Gilli Danda, Cricket, Pitthu etc.
- Civics (Parliamentary system of India vs. Presidential system of USA): We discussed names of the Indian PM and President.
- Dussehra and Divali: We discussed why they celebrated? Also discussed whether Divali in English should be spelt with a “v” instead of a “w”. (This is food for thought for parents also. ) Opinions were discussed and they are ready to make their choice now :).
Next Week: I plan to discuss the home work and probably start talking about music or discuss the epic Ramayana. I usually take the discussion based on interest in the class.
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