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Akshara is an initiative by an individual, Ravi Aluganti based in Madanapalle in Chittoor district, Andhra Pradesh. Ravi Aluganti’s work involves dividing his time between 15 government schools in the Madanapalle mandal – working with the teachers and children there to make class sessions more enjoyable, effective and useful. He is working with government schools with the following objectives:

I have been working with Akshara. Akshara signifies alphabet and learning. In Telugu it also means without an end - signifies that there is no end to learning. One can describe my work as follows “I hear – I forget”, “I see – I remember “, “I do – I understand”. We try to make children work with their hands through activity based learning, so that they understand the concepts involved in their topic. Activity based learning means that the children are involved in what they are doing. They work with their hands. There is a notion that in activity based learning there is no mental activity, but that is not true. Lot more mental activity happens with activity based learning. It is a form of play, and play is natural expression for children. There is lot of scope for thinking, questioning. When something does not work, one starts to think and question about it. There is also a high level of participation and involvement and this is child centered. In a normal class, children are at a distance sitting in rows and columns listening to the teacher. Through activity the usual classroom structure is broken.

We have found that activity based learning can be used as an effective tool for multi grade teaching. 75% of schools in AP are multi-grade, since most schools have 1-2 teachers only and children of varying age-groups. A general classroom is a very unnatural grouping, since all the children are of the same age. This is not true in any real life situation. A natural grouping based on the children’s learning levels tends to be a better way of structuring a class to ensure learning.

We use art and craft as a medium for activity based learning. We teach math, environmental sciences (EVS) and languages using arts and craft as medium. Some examples of what we have done - for fractions we give children a card on which there are discs, these discs have to be colored and cut into different fraction parts. The children actually handle bits of cards to learn fractions. When they add fractions, they put two pieces together to see what it adds to. When comparing they take one piece and put it on top of each other to see which is big and small. First understand the concept and then move to abstractions. For teaching shapes, we ask them to cut paper, color it and put them together to make collages and paintings. We ask children to look for shapes in nature and around them. For teaching solid shapes, we make actual solid shapes to see how many vertices, sides etc is there. For place value we play many kinds of games to understand the concept. For symmetry, we make kaleidoscopes using bits of mirror.

I’d like to show a poster with flaps we have made to learn about the human body. We have made it in such a way so that the child can look inside a flap and learn about the corresponding part. It also gives better perspective about where the parts are on the body. In a typical textbook there is only one representation and usually only one section is shown in detail. There is a lesson on joints in the human body. We make a simple toy that can move in different ways – this demonstrates the use of different joints in the body. If we talk about the different life-cycles in nature we make “flexigons” in class. The children can then look at the different stages in a life cycle by playing with and flipping the flexigon. We actually make a skeleton to learn about the different bones in the body.

After sometime the children break the aids, but then they can make it again since they learn how to do this. Things which are not breakable are made at our project. I have a workshop where we manufacture long lasting learning aids. I’d like to show you some of these. Here is a Soma cube - there are 230 ways of putting it together. Then we have geo board set having 3 boards - circular, rectangular and square. We can teach fractions, proportions, angles and multiplication. The Brahma tower can be used to understand the concept of ascending and descending order. We have a tan gram with which you can make thousands of different shapes.

For teaching languages we make cards. We took the text books for class 4 and made cards for all the words showing a picture depicting the word and the actual word itself. We make two sets of cards – self correcting (jigsaw like) and non-self correcting cards. In the beginning the children learn to match the picture and words in a self correcting manner. Later on once they are familiar they are able to do the same using non-self correcting cards. Then we play a game - pelvinism cards. Cards are put upside down on the floor. Two or more children can play it. First one child turns 2 cards. If they are matching, he wins the card. If not they have to keep the card back. Whoever has maximum cards wins. Then we have the alphabet set we made in English and Telugu made in plywood. We have more of the small letters and less of the capital letters since the children can build words using this. For each of the lessons from class 1-5, we have devised an activity on how to teach lessons to make it more interesting and enjoyable to the children. We have made a handbook for each topic in Science, Math, Social studies and Telugu.

Ques: You’ve been working with government schools. How do you manage this? How do you give them material? Do the kits stay in school?

Ans: I work with 15 government schools, the plywood learning aid kits are made by us and given to the schools. These remain in the schools. The number of each of the material I give to the schools differs based on the difficulty to make it. Plywood materials are typically given as one set per school. I go to 2 schools every day – one in the morning and to another in the afternoon. Different classes use it at different times for different activities- writing alphabets, making words, word games. We teach the small alphabets first since most books have more of small letters, and there are more of these so that children can use them to make words.

Ans: The craft material used to learn lessons are made in the schools by the children. When I take classes, I combine two or 3 classes together and children sit in groups. Older children may do the cutting part, younger can do coloring and others can do writing. It becomes a group activity. I work with about 20 children divided into groups of 4 or 5 each (from 1^st grade-5^th grade). I go to schools and ask the teacher if I can take a class and sometimes the teacher also joins us. Gradually I have noticed that some teachers are getting more interested and even stopping by the Akhsara office to learn more.

( Ravi next introduced Adi who works with an organization called MORE in Madanapalle. Akshara has trained the teacher/activists in MORE on how to make learning aids. Adi gave a brief background on MORE).

MORE – (Presentation by Adi)