Very often we encounter situations, when we feel our information about the topic is not adequate. If we do not have access to instructional support, say books, this inadequacy becomes even more acute.

Finding relevant information about every new topic and keeping oneself up-to-date is critical for a teacher.

In this section you will find curricular resources. They will help you enrich your information and awareness about various topics in Environmental Studies, Mathematics and Language.

These resources can be used beneficially in designing and planning your lessons. The resources comprising of writeups, activities, pictures and problems are organised thematically and together form a support system, which will help you enhance your knowledge enabling you to plan and execute your lessons more efficiently.

You will also notice that the support materials are disjoint pieces of content and ideas and no recommendation is made for their usage. Such recommendations cannot be made because each class is unique and so also each teacher and each set of students. These cannot be common requirements and hence each teacher will have to design his/her own lesson to meet the requirements of his/her class. This section will enable you to choose relevant content.

Pick and choose. Organise and integrate them into your lessons. Tell us how useful they were. Tell us also what else you would like to get here.

A note about activities:
Observing children while they are participating in any activity is very useful. It tells us a lot about children's learning. Pay very close attention to every question children ask or observation they make.

Each time an activity is repeated with some little change, it will be received with even greater enthusiasm by children than it got the previous time. So let children do each activity any number of times, at home or during play, adding something new each time. Feel free to modify the activities to suit the conceptual level of children or if you do not have the required apparatus. Activities can take an entirely unexpected turn, leading to other activities in related concepts. Look out for such opportunities and capitalise on them. Any activity can become the starting point of a dozen variations.

Help children learn to record all observations. They can draw figures and sketches to describe their observations. Children should also learn to use tabular columns to record and later draw inferences. At the end of all activities, discussions are essential to ensure that learning is taking place and also to eliminate misconceptions. Such discussions should involve all children.

Specimens collected and records generated can be good resources for further work, maybe in some other class too. So, preserve them. Also keep a record of how you went about conducting the activities, the problems you faced and any interesting variation you brought into the activity. You can also share your innovations with other fellow teachers.

A note about project ideas:
Assigning project work to children is increasingly getting popular with most schools because it lends itself very aptly to the learning by doing philosophy. Apart from the inherent advantages to children, teachers can also benefit from this activity.

These project ideas have been implemented by teachers and are being shared so that you can try them out in their own classes with appropriate modifications. We also hope that these ideas will spark off discussions on the pedagogical advantages of assigning project work to children.

Project work is a long term activity, involving children and teachers in different challenges. Do tell us about your experience in experimenting with projects. Share your project ideas with us.

A note about picture essays:
Seeing, hearing, touching, or smelling the real thing is certainly the best way to know about things. Providing such opportunities is therefore very essential to enrich the child's experience. But it is not possible to provide a first hand experience of every thing that we wish to help the child learn about. When the real thing is beyond the reach of the child, using a picture can be of help. In many cases it can also initiate and motivate children to observe the real thing. Exploring remote environments become very convenient.

Download these pictures. Use them with children. Let us know how you used them. What difficulties did you face? What other pictures do you need?

A note about problems:
Once children fall in love with numbers, patterns, shapes and structures, mathematics is no more a "difficult" subject. Puzzles, problems or games can also be used to teach concepts, to reinforce them or to evaluate learning. In mathematics, every topic is linked to every other topic. It is necessary that children start seeing these relationships. Problems are a handy way in which such linkages are highlighted. But the best part about problems is that it tickles the mind, challenges it and provokes curiosity. You can use this to good effect.

Spend some time in critically looking at the problems. Look for concepts that are being emphasised. Observe the fun element that is being introduced. Create more such problems and try them out.

In conclusion:
Be it activities, projects, pictures or problems, children can be involved in designing, planning, gathering materials and actual implementation. Children involved in such acts are also more involved in learning. You also help them prepare for life.