Hindi
• The Hindi session was fully dedicated to practicing spoken Hindi.
• I have observed that the students are generally ok with using common verbs but have trouble with using “connector” words e.g. prepositions like “mein”, “par”, “se”, “tak”, etc.
• So we did a few things:
o Like in the last class, the students gave each other “funny exercise” instructions in Hindi.
o We practiced the use of prepositions by playing several rounds of rapid fire quizzes with 4 teams with increasing points given for quality sentences.
o Finally during the snack break, we conversed with the students about their homework topic.
• I will continue to emphasize spoken Hindi in the next few classes.

Culture
• Mohit –ji introduced the class about Indian folk music.
• The class played a quiz about identifying different styles of Indian music learnt so far.

 

Hindi
• We spent the Hindi session revising the homework about feelings and practicing spoken Hindi.
• We don’t have a separate session for spoken Hindi in our class but we incorporate this in the overall session. In this class, we practiced spoken Hindi in two different formats:
o Do as we say –  I usually make the children do some funny exercises in the beginning of the class before the prayer. In this class, I had half the class instruct the other half about what they wanted them to do – like lift up their hands, jump on one leg, etc. We’ll do more of this in the subsequent classes.
o Conversation topic – The class was divided into 5 groups and each group came up with a topic they spoke some lines about in Hindi. This week’s homework is a continuation of this exercise.
Culture
• Mohit –ji introduced the class to Indian classical music and its different forms – Hindustani and Carnatic.
• We discussed about classical constructs such as swar, raga and taal, and introduced some famous classical artistes.
In this context, I was very sad to learn about the passing away of Jagjit Singh – a favorite ghazal artist for many of us – about whom we also spent quite some time discussing in class. Please do discuss this with the children.

We welcomed everyone back to Gurukul - most of the students from class 4B and 4C are now in class 5B.

 

- Reviewed counting from 1-50 using a jumping exercise :) Students in this class are *strongly* advised to have a good breakfast before coming to class!

- Reviewed summer workbook - students summarized some of the stories in a few lines in Hindi.

- Reviewed written Hindi by spelling out the words "Resolution" and "Constitution" in Hindi. This tested the student's grasp on using matras and joint letters.

- Reviewed present and past tense and introduced future tense in the following forms:

Present: Karan jaa raha hai.

Past: Simran dekhti thi.

Future: Aman soyega.

- Reviewed basic conversation greetings, including:

Good morning - Shubh Prabhat

Good night - Shubh Raatri

 

The students will be introduced to the different style of Indian music. This week they learnt about Qawwali - its background, structure - and heard a couple of examples of Qawwali by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.