Reimagining Your Classroom
Act now to reimagine education!
Imagine if every student leveraged their strengths, instead of only a few succeeding. Think about how you can support your teacher to ensure every student gets an excellent education!
Here’s how you can start! Below you will find stories, learnings and exact steps you can try out to achieve what
these kids and educators did. Click on the resource that you'd like to learn and get started.
Let’s reimagine education together!
Setting up Socio-Emotional Learning
How can Kids leverage their emotions?
Socio-Emotional Learning (SEL) develops essential life skills in children such as interpersonal skills, managing their own emotions, and understanding their role in their communities and the world. Bringing SEL into a classroom can create a culture of compassion and bring educators and students closer together. SEL can also build skills and mindsets that ensure children not only survive but also thrive across situations. It helps create a safe space that enables a positive learning environment.
The SEL Track started in Pune, India over the summer as a team of 12 Teach For India Fellows and 2 Program Managers, came together to create awareness and resources to implement SEL in our classrooms. In light of the pandemic, they felt the urgency to build resilience and empathy in our children more than ever. Through researching around SEL, curating resources, and facilitating training sessions, they have been able to enable access to SEL for approximately 200 Fellows in the city of Pune. It has offered Fellows insight into how our children process their emotions and children a chance to express and understand themselves.
How can you transform your classroom into a conscious community?
Fill out the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) for the Kids in your classroom. It is one of the most widely used tools to initially assess the area in which the child may be facing difficulties. This is a brief behavioral screening questionnaire for Kids ranging from the age of 3 to 16 years.
The tool has 20 items around emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity/inattention, peer relationship problems, and pro-social behavior.
Score 0 if you feel the statement is not true, 1 if it is somewhat true, and 2 if it is certainly true.
Fill in scores for all.
Add the scores for all the statements and calculate the average.
If a student is close to the average, then it is unlikely they are clinically facing any issue.
If it is slightly high then it’s possible that the child is facing clinically significant problems.
If the student is high then it’s probable that the child is facing clinically significant problems.
If the student is very high then it’s likely that the child is facing clinically significant problems.
Go over your results from the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire to understand the needs of your classroom. Then, choose the right objectives for your classes.
Each of these grade-specific SEL objects have the following -
Goals: The three SEL goals are broad statements consisting the knowledge and skills that are built through the SEL content.
Learning Standards: The ten SEL learning standards are specific statements of the knowledge and skills within a goal that students should know and be able to do. Standards are broader learning targets used to align curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
Benchmarks: The benchmarks are learning targets that are more specific than standards. They specify the developmentally appropriate SEL knowledge and skills for each standard.
Performance Descriptors: The performance descriptors are the most specific learning targets that build upon the standards and benchmarks. They offer a list of learning targets that provide greater detail of the specific SEL knowledge, reasoning, and skills highlighted in the standards.
Using the right objectives and make your own plans for Socio-Emotional Learning!
Instead of the above objectives, do you want to plan a value-based session? You can build the values of empathy, self-esteem, self-awareness, collaboration, gratitude and mindfulness.
You can try the following with your kids to integrate SEL in your classroom.
Here are more resources for you!
Have you tried bringing SEL to your classroom? How was your experience?
Shiv and the Microverse
How can you use visual storytelling to make learning fun?
'Shiv and the Microverse' is a comic book authored by KER Revolutionary, Arnav Chopra. It demystifies key concepts in Particle Physics using Manga. Shiv, a fifteen-year-old boy, journeys in the past with an omniscient Time Keeper to observe the greatest discoveries in particle physics and learn from the discoverers themselves. It aims to bring alive the magic in Physics to make it less scary and build interest in the subject.
Shiv and the Microverse was Arnav's solo project. He was thrilled when Prof. Raghavan Rangarajan, the Dean of the Undergraduate College at Ahmedabad University agreed to mentor him. He shared his comics with his teachers and they loved it so much that they began using it as a teaching tool. Arnav also worked in partnership with Kids Education Revolution that to amplify its impact by launching the book and conducting a masterclass around “Learning using visual storytelling” at InspirED 2020.
How can you use visual storytelling to make learning fun?
1.
Don't worry about your drawing skills. It is completely fine if you are not able to draw beautiful illustrations but the idea is to express and learn through art.
2.
Choose the type of art that you and your kids will enjoy. Selecting the type of art that you and your kids will be interested in will make it easier to learn from. It could be a comic, a picture book or a set of doodles!
3.
Learn the concepts inside out and think visually. Spend some time to research and understand the topics that you want to learn in depth. Then, think how they would look like in the form of a cartoon and how you could draw them!
4.
Create a relatable character. Think and imagine a character that you like, a person that you'd like to learn from.
5.
Make it organic and natural. Make the dialogue sound like how you or any normal person would talk. Imagine a friend talking and write down your thoughts.
6.
Change the language of the information and facts from the source. Learning is easier when you can say it in simple words.
7.
Insert some elements of humor. Feel free to crack some jokes between the characters and have fun with it! Remember, the idea is to make the learning interesting.
8.
If you don't want to draw a whole book, when you learn something difficult in class, you can try to draw it out with your pen and paper.
Have you learned using art? We would love to see it!
Learning Loop Discussion
How do you learn from students?
The KER Learning Loop, which was officially launched in August 2018, was conceptualized after recognizing the need to learn from students and their journeys. This resource will guide you in understanding how to learn from students and their journeys. Through this process, we hope you find the factors that foster student leadership.
Across India, there are students who are leading peer counseling sessions to deal with exam-related pressure and starting community centers to drive adult literacy. Deeply rooted in empathy and a belief in the transformative power of education, these students' projects are getting us to wonder - what are our kids doing to reimagine education? and what are the factors that have enabled these students to reimagine education?
Here is what we learned from our 2018 discussion -
How can you learn and listen from kids?
There are two ways you can engage with kids using this resource-
1. Conduct your own Learning Loop discussion in your classroom or school.
The following are a few kids whose stories we have documented -
Go through the videos above and student portfolios and pick 6 or 7 profiles that you’d like to discuss.
Next, select a balanced group of students and educators that would be a part of the discussion.
If you are conducting this discussion at the classroom level then, make sure you are inviting other educators such as other teachers from the school to join the kids in your classroom.
If you are conducting this discussion at the classroom level then, make sure you are inviting other educators such as other teachers from the school to join the kids in your classroom.
Send the videos and portfolios to the selected group a minimum of 10 days prior to the discussion. Instruct the participants to place the students on a spectrum from 1 to 5 where 1 will be a student whose values we most aspire for and would want to learn more from. Make sure that you also share the following as prework for the participants to complete before the day of the discussion-
Divide the participants into small groups of about 5 people each; these will be the groups they’re in for the entire discussion.
To conduct the discussion, you can refer to the following -
The discussion consists of selecting students and narrowing down the list to two students which might make you uncomfortable but keep in mind that this is the part where the most learning will emerge. Towards the end, the group will spend time discussing the commonalities between the top 2 students and how they can take these learnings back and apply them in their work.
Be sure to put your learnings together and bring them back to your kids and educators.
Based on the evidence shared, what stakeholder practices/actions and ecosystem factors are standing out to you?
2. Create your own Learning Loop!
The entire process is a fascinating experience and a great opportunity for you to learn more about your students and document their stories.
Identify the students whose stories you’d want to capture.
Spend some time documenting their stories in the following ways-
Videos - We took video interviews of the student leader, their educator, peers, and parents. You ask them questions on what inspires them, what they’d like to see in the education system, and about their life/project so far.
Student Portfolio - Ask the kids to put together different artefacts that would capture their journey:
Personal Vision, the change-making project they’ve taken up and an online psychometric test.
Next, select a balanced group of students and educators that would be a part of the discussion.
If you are conducting this discussion at the classroom level then, make sure you are inviting other educators such as other teachers from the school to join the kids in your classroom.
If you are conducting this discussion at the school level then, create a mix of students and educators from other classrooms. You would need a total of 15-25 kids and educators that are balanced in gender, caste, race and age.
Send the videos and portfolios to the selected group a minimum of 10 days prior to the discussion. Instruct the participants to place the students on a spectrum from 1 to 5 where 1 will be a student whose values we most aspire for and would want to learn more from. Make sure that you also share the following as prework for the participants to complete before the day of the discussion -
Divide the participants into small groups of about 5 people each; these will be the groups they’re in for the entire discussion.
To conduct the discussion, you can refer to the following -
The discussion consists of selecting students and narrowing down the list to two students which might make you uncomfortable but keep in mind that this is the part where the most learning will emerge. Towards the end, the group will spend time discussing the commonalities between the top 2 students and how they can take these learnings back and apply them in their work.
Be sure to put your learnings together and bring them back to your kids and educators.
Do share your learnings and experience from the day with us!
Maya - The Find Your Light Journey
This resource uses literature and theatre to get children to embark on a journey to find their potential. The journey builds the values of courage, compassion and wisdom and how our kids can live by these values inside and outside of class.
The Find Your Light Package is a collection of lesson plans that can be implemented by an educator or student within a group during the opening or closing of the day.
Through this resource, all Kids will first engage more deeply with Princess Maya’s journey of finding her own potential and then embark on their own journey to find their potential.
Each lesson is structured in the same way - a Big Question to be explored, a link to the Maya Story, an objective, and a plan filled with sparks and activities which end with challenges and reflections to be completed after each lesson.
The end of the 10 lessons will culminate in a “performance task” that will capture each kids’ learning through the journey.
The kids should make a “My Light” book, adding pages after each lesson so that by the end they have a book of their individual journey to remember.
At the end of the 10 lessons, let the kids create their own “Story of Me” exhibition to present before the class.
Do share your journey to finding your light with us!
Learning Circles - Learn more about yourself & each other
A Learning Circle is a safe space where kids and educators can be who they are and say what they believe. Equally, it is a space where they can practice listening to what others say without judgment and value others for who they uniquely are. These safe spaces can look like honest conversations and circles of dialogue and listening. In this resource, we will deep dive into two types of these learning circles.
1. Classroom Learning Circles
After shifting schools, Shagun and her two friends, Radha and Sana, recognised the importance of safe spaces. They worked on conducting learning circles in their classroom, school, and community to explore the challenges that kids are facing in their daily lives and practice reflection to find solutions for these challenges.
How can you begin these learning circles?
Survey the kids in your class and find out if anyone needs a safe sharing space and what would make them feel safe.
Form Learning Circle groups with about 5 people (students/educators) in each group and schedule Learning Circle time each week.
Establish within each group that the Learning Circle space will be facilitated by a member of the group, each week.
For every Learning Circle, one student from each group will pair up with a mentor. The mentor and the mentee will plan and rehearse the Learning Circle together, but it will finally be executed only by the student.
The topics and plans of the Learning Circles will be largely non-academic and instead will be based on social, emotional or physical problems/ life experiences that they are facing/ have faced. Please use the plans here for the learning circles.
The Learning Circle can be conducted in any language depending on the comfort of the group.
2. Group Reflection and Feedback Circles
Teach For India Fellows Amalaya and Ravela practiced these circles with their students in order to build honest positive and constructive feedback that will help Kids and Educators to become a better version of themselves.
Here’s how you can build a safe space for sharing feedback and group reflection:
Form groups of Kids and Educators, trying to ensure that each group has a mix of personality types.
Start the session by having everyone share one thing about themselves that they are most proud of and one thing that they are hoping to get better at.
Reflect together as a class to come up with something the entire class is proud of and something the class can improve on as a team.
Ask each participant to think about what they will do individually to help the class get stronger as a whole.
Repeat the above activity and combine the reflections to come up with a class goal.
As these circles continue to take place, open each session by asking participants to give each other feedback. This feedback should be based on the progress they’ve made towards their goals and should be a mix of positive and constructive observations.
Repeat the structure of your first session, while also keeping track of progress that is made over the weeks.
As a class, celebrate the successes of individuals and the class, and continue to work on areas of improvement together.
Let us know what your experience was like!