One Life: Live and Enjoy... =)

Saturday, December 17, 2011

The Last Activity of the Year...

This was our last Ashram visit of the year. As a result, I had planned something different for Aniket at the end of the class. Initially, we finished one chapter of his course as per the regular schedule and then moved on to adding its summary to our English Class Power Point Presentation. This time, I taught him different kinds of animations and their applications. I discovered that this method not only makes learning English more fun for him, but, also gives him the required exposure, which will broaden his horizons. I was very happy as this was the first time after almost 2 months that I saw him operating the laptop comfortably and with confidence. His fear from technology usually stopped him from trying anything new, but, this time, I noticed him responding to his own curiosity and exploring with a new found ease.

After having updated the PPT, we moved on to the new activity. I narrated to him the story of Puss in Boots up till where Puss finally confronts the Ogre and then, I told him to complete the story with his own imagination and write it. This, way, he learnt a lot of new words which were an improvement to his vocabulary. Though, he took some time to come up with an ending, we finally managed it. He first recited his story in his mother tongue, Marathi. This was a new challenge for me because, though, I understand Marathi; I am not very fluent with it. So, in the process I added a few new points to my language skills too. And, slowly, we moved on to translating every part and writing it down.

It was very frustrating at points, but, we both persevered and had a new creation in our hands by the end of class. It was a proud moment for me as his teacher because initially when we had started out, Aniket had difficulties framing simple sentences and now he was writing complete paragraphs fabricated from his own figment of imagination. In all, it was a very satisfying and exciting CAS activity.


Saturday, December 10, 2011

A New Way to Go About Things...

As we are almost done with our CAS hours now, our Coordinator came up with a new idea for our batch. She advised us to assist our juniors with the teaching so that they get a hang of it and we learn how to lead without putting a person down. This was a new challenge, as over the time, I had come to love teaching the students at the ashram and now, I had to take a backseat and help my friends get on with in a good way. It took some time for me to get used to the idea, but, by the end of it, I got into a good partnership helping my friend take the lead.



To help increase my student, Aniket's, exposure levels, I had planned to teach him to use Microsoft PowerPoint in the last half an hour of the class. So, for the first hour, we concentrated on his English textbook and finished two chapters and then we made a basic ppt on the same, thus, making the class enjoyable for him as well introducing him to new technology.



By the end of the class, I had learnt how to maintain ethical boundaries with my colleges and it was a very insightful CAS session on the whole.