RightStart Feedback

Ananth E S

The recently conducted right start project, held at olcott  memorial high school, for the benefit of various rural and local persons, in the teaching profession, was really very good at the outset, even though the undersigned attended one session only out of the more than 5 days of action. The session that I attended was conducted by One Saraswathy madam, and it was really nice that she had adopted various novel methods to be followed, in teaching children of tender ages. She had even played a tape literally infusing a very good idea of science, while telling the age old song on the moon

NILAA NILAA OADI VAA. It was quite catchy.

She also opined rather convincingly as to how pretty young minds are so impressionable, and that they have their own ideas about any subject on earth, and on occasions, it belies to understand that the children's imagination, knows no limit, and that sometimes very uncommon factors they say, lead to a novel story line, and this struck a note in me that perhaps J.K.Rowling must have experienced similar incidents, before the creation of Harry Potters. Well all stories are in fact an exaggeration, as per Alexander Dumas.

And so I inferred that the whole project must have been satisfactory, and Lakshmi should be complimented for organising this; but she could have arranged perhaps a longer session(days); ofcourse, perhaps cost factors might have weighed heavily. We can take this kind to actual rural areas

rather frequently, would be my appeal to all, for consideration, in future.

Anita Satish

I attended the sessions on the september 29th from around 12 noon. The first session that I attended was by Ms. P.Saraswati. She played a game of 5 questions, (similar to 20 questions). It took a while for the participants to understand what the game was all about. There was some confusion initially as the participants would directly ask, did u think of the book, pencil etc. After a while, some people understood that questions had to be asked based on some common property of the objects, like is it made of glass, is it made of paper, is it used for writing etc, so as to eliminate some of the objects. After this game saraswati mentioned that this game is not something new she has invented but is there in the textbook. She also stressed the point that most of the activities that they had done till now was all present in the textbook and she proceeded to show them all the activties that were in the book. She encouraged the teachers to make good use of the book and use the activities not just for the lesson that it is prescribed, but also with other lessons. And that this would help them make their classroom more interactive, fun and children would learn more.

In the afternoon was session by L.S.Saraswati. on the previous day she had discussed with the participants about how to encourage the skill of speaking, talking amongst the children, as this helps in language development. The participants had to read some notes and someone asked for a clarification of a point mentioned in the notes - " that anything that the child talks about, any events, incidents, fantasies etc are all stories for the child". Participants felt how these can be called as stories as stories should have a moral ending. There was an interesting discussion around this point, what are stories and if stories should have a moral ending. After this there were discussion and activities on how to encourage the skill of reading amongst the children. Reading is highly absent in children these days. There was some discussion on why the child may not be interested in reading and what the teacher can do to overcome this.

Overall, the sessions were very useful and interesting. I also learnt a lot of activities that I could use if I intend to do language workshops in the future, and how I can improvise what I had used with another group.

Rajaram

Yesterday I got a chance to visit the session offered by Ms. L.S.Saraswati for project RightStart. Even before that it was clear that the project was on its way to be a success. From Rishiyur every teacher had come including the two women who run the Balwadi! The fact that everyone of them so willingly came during their holidays to attend some training nodoubt partly had to do with the excitement of seeing Chennai. But it also conveyed a sincere desire to do their job better.

My sitting through one hour of the session on how children acquire language skills convinced me of the same. The session was run very well. L.S.Saraswathi was very good at presenting her points and getting the teachers to come out with their own opinion. Rather than forcing her views on them, she was able to get the right messages out of the mouth of the teachers themselves. I also being an expectant father myself learned valuable lessons on parenting. She made us understand what it means to see things from the perspective of the children.