Integrated Project: ‘All About Money!’
At Inspire, it is our firm belief that integrated projects facilitate learning in multiple directions. An integrated project called, ‘All about Money’ was initiated for students of Grades 3 to 5. The project included integration of various aspects across Language-Arts, Math, Visual Arts and Financial Literacy. With the help of their teachers, students created colourful mind-maps discussing the need for money, verbs related to money, better money habits. Children examined the history of money and created a timeline from barter system to official standard value. Comparisons were made between different currency around the world to understand the value of money. Teachers helped children compare the biggest and the smallest banknotes. Students were asked to find interesting facts about money and the same was discussed in class. Circle-time discussion comprised of sharing opinions about kid’s pocket money as allowances and spending plans. In an interesting way, children were granted allowances and were guided to make their individual spending plans. Through a mike activity, children were given situations and were guided by teachers with respect to comparison buying. A session was devoted to understanding money responsibility through a mock bank and how saving and investing help build wealth for an individual. Students also listed various proverbs related to money and illustrated them. To help students understand how adverts lure and sometimes fool a buyer, in a fun way, children worked in groups to create and sell their product, which was thoroughly enjoyed by the students. Students of Grade 5 examined how the currency of a country is designed and as part of their visual arts class, designed a specimen of their unique currency.
Integrated projects aid multidimensional learning where the learners think, learn, collaborate and are happy doing it all.
Language Arts Week
Language is best caught!’ has always been our philosophy at Inspire. In view of this, an entire week was dedicated to Language Arts in mid-December and fun filled activities were planned for the students. The week initiated with an interactive session with children’s book Author, Ms. Radhika Suri who told the students about her journey as an author. She also discussed her books ‘Gol Gol Gappas’ and ‘Crunchy, Munchy Jalebis,’ throwing light on the process of publishing a book. Another highlight of the week was an Inter-Class competition called ‘My Class-Magazine!’ This was an integrated project which involved English, Hindi, Visual Arts and Environmental Science as the subjects. It was a treat to go through vibrant class-magazines which comprised of students’ work in the form of poems, articles, diary-entries, stories, comic-strips, acrostic poems, art-work, information-reports and posters. In an amazing way, Language Arts Week helped each student emerge as a winner for each child learnt the power of working in a team, using one’s imagination and creating meaningful content, TOGETHER. Winners were awarded Trophies and Certificates for their wonderful endeavours. All class magazines were displayed at the School reception and were highly praised by the parents and other visitors to the School. Cheers to Language Arts!
Geometricity
At Inspire, we firmly believe that children learn both through books and through their surroundings. Since Project Based Learning provides for an authentic way to measure the level of understanding of each child, an interesting project was undertaken by the students of Grade 4 and 5 as a part of Mathematics as a Subject. The project titled ‘Geometricity’ was undertaken by them wherein they constructed a room-sized model of a city, based on their learning and understanding of the concepts of Geometry. In a fun filled manner, the children turned into little engineers and developed different areas of a city, including cross-roads, amusement park, public libraries, gardens, super-market, shopping-mall, gymnasium, movie-theatre and airport, using their understanding of 2D and 3D shapes, lines and angles. In an exciting manner, everything was put together as a project display for all the parents and the visitors to see while the enthusiastic students took them through their learning journey. Learning practically helped the students strengthen their understanding of the Geometrical concepts and collaborate across different groups to create GEOMETRICITY.