Thursday, July 14, 2011

Our Tamarind Tree

Hello! You can call me Tamarind Tree. As you probably realized, I am a gorgeous tamarind tree, and I would like to tell you my story. When I was a young sapling I had no friends beside me. I was the lone tree in the garden. My home was filled with a carpet of lush green grass. Over the years, I grew up into a magnificent and beautiful tree. My strong, dark-brown branches gave birth to pretty flowers and ripe, tasty fruits. I was content and happy.

One day, I saw a few people digging the soil around me. I was nervous and tensed. What if they decided to cut me down? Maybe they did not like my flowers or my fruits. But the days went by, and I was left unharmed. They gave me a new identity. They dressed me up, made me prettier than I already was, and suddenly, I found new friends.

The silence evaporated under the musical notes of laughter of the children who began to play around me. Beside me stood a gorgeous building, housing first four children, and then thirteen- this turned to fifty, and eventually to ninety two enthusiastic children. Every one of them began to play around me, sit under my shade, and run about my huge bark.

Only some of them know me as the Tamarind Tree; some call me imli ka ped, some call me chinta pandu. I have grown fond of each and every child who treats me with care and love. I have been given a little house perched on my branches which children visit once in a while, finding that my tree-tops provide a lovely view of their second home. I do hope that more children would venture into this lovely atmosphere of both fun and seriousness, and I hope that they spread their wings as I have spread my branches out.


By: Meena and Preeti

Monday, July 11, 2011

First Field Trip of 2011

As Sancta Maria gives equal importance to learning out of the class room, we went for a field trip to various places on Saturday, the 9th of July. Grades 2,3,4,8,9 went to Botanical garden as the on going theme was plants. Grades 5,6,7 went to Salarjung Museum to get a glimpse into history.
















Friday, July 8, 2011

No F7 Required...!


If vee rote...  
Tha vay vee spoak... 
Then vee wood not need 
Spel cheks...

To chek tha ntyre album clik on: No F7 Required...! (1)


Tips for being a good teacher

While searching on internet I found a very good article which I want to share with everyone.

Teaching is a lucrative profession. And, as the education sector in India is getting recognition in both national and international arena, opportunities for teaching professionals are expected to grow further. But, not everyone in this profession can benefit from these opportunities. If you want to do well in this field as a teacher, inculcate some intrinsic personality characteristics in you along with brushing up your professional skills. It will help you cover miles in your career.


Personality Traits of Good Teachers
Every profession has its own demand and requirements and teaching is no exception. Before brushing up your professional skills, you first need to work on the basic personality traits. These include:

Passion: You need passion to motivate children to learn and perform things which are acceptable, relevant and meaningful.

Communication: In order to understand students and class, you first need to have great communication skills. If you are a good listener with sharp memory, your job will become easy. You should encourage students to ask questions and be ready with responses.

Flexibility: You should be comfortable in creating a fine balance between leniency and strictness in classroom.

Style: A teacher is a role model of many students and hence, having a good personality is very important. It includes dressing sense, presentation and mannerisms.

Humor: Unlike teachers of yester years, you need to interact with your students in a lighthearted way. You need to be friendly. Sometimes, cracking harmless jokes is required. But again, you must use your discretion to judge a particular situation.

Care: You should be caring and loving towards kids. It will help you understand them and accordingly, teach them.

Leadership: Since you have the responsibility to mould the youth of today into confident and responsible citizens for tomorrow, you first need to inculcate leadership qualities in you. You must know to make utmost use of the available funds, resources and manpower.

Teamwork: For a good teacher, it is a must to be a good team player also. He or she should work in collaboration and coordination with seniors and juniors.


Respect: If you give respect, you earn it as well. So, it’s important that you pay respect to your students. This is a sign of a supremely good teacher.

Professional Skills of Good Teachers
A good teacher, instructor or professor needs to possess excellent professional skills also in addition to a set of soft skills. While sound academic qualification is important, you as a teacher need to master some classroom etiquettes as well. These are:

Planning & Provision: An excellent teacher knows well to plan his or lessons for next day in advance. He or she needs to gather learning materials beforehand so that the class does not have to wait.

Paper Correction: Often teachers take long time to assess student’s performance in exam, which in turn creates nervous feeling or cause loss of interest in them. So, if you don’t want this situation to occur, make sure to correct papers on time.

Interactivity: While you are in the classroom, do interact with students. Don’t let your classroom slip into a monologue. It will create boredom and subsequently, defeat the very purpose of teaching.

Courtesy http://www.indiaedu.com/articles/tips-for-good-teacher.html

By Paramjit and Viji


Thursday, July 7, 2011

C for crochet


Today our Thursday's clubs came alive! Yeahhhhh! :)

Our little club - the "Art Club" -  settled in the Art room and embarked an amazing art exploration journey with an unusual activity - crochet.


Let's begin! Introducing crochet.

Our goals were modest as it is quite a challenging form of handwork. Especially at the very beginning. It could be stated that while all handwork engages the whole human being, it is essentially in the following ways that handwork affects a growing child:

·         it helps with fine motor skills 
·         it promotes patience
·         it transforms willpower into beauty of form
·         it changes what would otherwise be an insignificant activity into a virtue.

Even with a modest goal - a firendship wristband - i had some doubts about kids warming up to crochet. I think Sayuja and I were both exchanging doubtful glances and then, as it so often happens, kids proved us wrong. We got scared that the challenge was too difficult only to see that kids don't seem to mind the challenge at all. You should see those focused faces while struggling to guide the crochet needle into the "bunny hole" - the term used for the initial loop that starts it all. 

Keerthi shrieked once: "My bunny hole is no longer there! Where did my bunny hole go?!?" We all thought that was funny! :)


Through the hole, grab the thread and pull it back through the hole....

So much coordination! So much focus!


Little ones can braid without the crochet needle...it is still not easy!
Sai Krishna guided Shamukhi to complete her friendship wristband - good job both of them!!!
Sahiti proud of her first few stitches..."I did one, i did one!"

Sajuya completely focused :)






















The time went by way too fast and we had to get ready to leave but not before we all tied our brand new wristbands to our wrists and posed for a last photo! 


We did it!


 Yes, we did it! Now, just wait and see what we have in store for next Thursday! 

Saturday, July 2, 2011

An Eventful Week @ Sancta Maria

World Laughter Day

Celebrating World Laughter Day

Ruchi tells us all about it !

the first clowns...

the mirror clowns

the juggling clowns

the jumping clown

the funny clowns

and all the clowns !

Pre- Primary Medical Check Up





The Book Fair



The Book Fair in the foyer which we all loved !

yes, "we have many wonderful books "

Oh ! how we loved browsing

3D Books

Grade 9 checks out the fiction titles

gimme a book bout a vampire now !

Monday, June 27, 2011

Fun with Numbers!!

Conceptual learning- And what is that??

“You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.” -Clay P. Bedford

Oh yeah!!It happens here.

Students try to relate everything to real life and learn with a thought “Why”??

The same thing goes with NUMBERS too.

It happened that Paul Erdos, a Hungarian mathematician was once asked “Why are numbers beautiful? “

He replied “It's like asking why Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is beautiful. If you don't see why, someone can't tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren't beautiful, nothing is.”

And rejoicing these beautiful numbers is not restricted to just notebooks and calculations, but through a varied range of activities in Sancta Maria.
Have a look at our kids enjoying numbers with a “Ganith mala”, Garland of beads.







“Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting”-Gottfried Leibniz
So let’s enjoy listening to this beautiful music…