Thursday 7 March 2013

Importance of one-to-one interaction in education


- A guest post by Ms Sujata Mandal

Interaction can be an excellent strategy for enhancing student motivation, fostering intellectual agility, and encouraging democratic habits. They create opportunities for students to practice and sharpen a number of skills, including the ability to articulate and defend positions, consider different points of view, and enlist and evaluate evidence.

School is a place where students learn about communication and often develop communication strategies that they will use for the rest of their lives. Therefore, it is important that students learn to communicate effectively. Parents, teachers and administrators should serve as role models and demonstrate effective communication strategies. 




Communication between Teachers and Students


Teachers and students need to be able to have open communication in the classroom. Communication leads to respect, allowing teachers to do their jobs in the most efficient way possible. Students who feel like they can communicate with their teachers are also more likely to ask questions and ask for the help they need. This ultimately leads to increased learning.

Communication between Students

Students learn a lot about communication in school, so it is imperative that they are taught the importance of good communication skills. Group work and activities that enable children to communicate with one another are great options for teachers who are trying to express the importance of good communication skills.

Positive Attitude

Maintaining a positive attitude, as well as a positive tone, when speaking with others in the school environment is one of the most effective communication strategies. Teachers must stay positive with their students instead of being negative about their failures. Students must also know how to keep a positive attitude when dealing with their teachers and peers. Students will find success in the classroom if they learn to bring up their questions, comments and concerns with positive energy.

Asking Questions

Asking questions is another effective communication strategy that is commonly used in schools. Teachers should ensure that their students always feel as comfortable as possible when it comes to asking questions about their schoolwork. Teachers can do this by using encouraging language or reward systems for students who ask questions during class.

Positive, encouraging, honest teacher student communication and interaction showing mutual respect are vital on many levels. Showing interest and care for students will create a trusting and genuine bond with them, and in most cases they will reciprocate, establishing a win-win situation for students and teachers.

Good interaction provides avenues for exploration and discovery. When planning an interaction it is helpful to consider not only cognitive, but also social/emotional, and physical factors that may foster productive exchange of ideas, create trusting and respectful relationships, and promote the well-being, self-esteem, and sense of security in students.

Ms Sujata Mandal is our School Coordinator: Activities and Sports and Head of Department (Science).

Monday 4 March 2013

Why practical knowledge is important for students?


-          A guest post by Ms Keya Sen

When an engineer says, “I am building a bridge”, the expression not merely focuses on the fact that she is creating something, but also talks about her way of expressing her knowledge through practical application. She is exercising what she learnt through books in a real-world scenario. No matter how many tests she might have given or how many assignments she may have aced, what mattered at that moment is how accurately she could apply her learning of so many years. Here arises the question of practical knowledge.



A person who is able to experience things not just gets a hands-on understanding of the subject, but also learns in a faster and easier manner. The same theory applies to students.

A child’s personal mode of learning is in fact through experiencing what is happening and recognising things through practical approach. This makes the child enhance her speculative knowledge and she is able to judge in accordance to the facts.

The child’s practical knowledge paves the way of knowing about things. For example, the teacher may say, if one is building a bridge out of concrete and steel one should use such-and-such a formula to measure the load, she can produce a technical drawing, and she can show a student how to calculate the depth of the foundation. But what would really come handy is to actually let the student work on a model of a bridge, to let her build one from scratch, so that she is able to apply the theory into practice.

So, be it building bridges or making a documentary film, a student should be given the opportunity to explore and gain knowledge, acquired through training, practice, learning facts, and so forth.

Ms Keya Sen is our Senior School Coordinator (Academics).