Approach and Methods

The academic part of the school is based on the following approach:

·         The most important aspect of the approach is attitude of the teacher, which should be that learning is a form of play which fosters the blossoming of the child’s natural development. Learning should and can be made interesting, enjoyable, fun.

~      A large portion of the teaching materials below 1st standard are produced at the school by the teachers, who customize their teaching aids to suit the interests and knowledge levels of the students.

~       Children learn spontaneously when their interest and curiosity are awakened and this occurs naturally at the age of 2 plus.

~       The student-teacher ratio is kept very low to enable the teacher to work with small groups of 4-5 children at a time while the others are absorbed in learning games or recreational play. The most effective ratio is ten students per teacher during pre-school, LKG and UKG and fifteen students per teacher during standards 1 to 5. However, since the teaching methods are intense, each student actually need attend only 2½ to 3 hours of class per day, enabling each teacher to effectively handle double the number of students.
                             

~       The act of teaching in the lower three levels consists primarily of presenting sensory images, objects and information to the child in a pleasant and interesting manner in the form of flash cards. This permits the child to observe and inquire about the subject, without compelling the child to memorize. Coloured flash cards with large images are utilized as convenient, low cost teaching aids. 

~        Since the stress is on the idea that the younger a child is, the better equipped is he to learn, the method is teaching focused. The child is taught systematically to synchronise two of his sense organs, namely his eyes and ears. Even as the words are being flashed, the word is called out. The child learns to assimilate skilfully the two pieces of information being given. The baby is taught to see a word, hear it and know it simultaneously. The child is taught a word as a complete unit of sound and its meaning.

~        Rapid acquisition of basic reading and verbal skills in multiple languages occurs naturally by exposing the child to whole words as objects on flash cards repetitively for very brief periods. Story telling is used to make learning fun and to communicate basic values of goodness, beauty, harmony, responsibility and right conduct.·         

~       The child is not so much taught a language as much as a skill to acquire and learn as many languages as his environment will permit.  Similarly, the child is taught numerals before numbers and functions in mathematics. Encyclopaedic knowledge is taught to a child by first teaching bits of  information about any topic. The ring of knowledge is slowly enlarged until it encompasses and includes other topics too. The ring grows big enough to move from topics to subject to interdisciplinary ideas. The result is a very broad based learning, a very wide foundation  to understanding, assimilating and finally creating new ideas.  Information on people and other living things, places, history, geography, and other cultures are presented to the child in the form of stories, pictorial information and explanations combined together to present facts in a living, integrated context rather than as a series of separate divorced subjects. For this, an extensive range of printed books are used as well as our own home-made flash cards.

~        Audio visuals, including video films on nature, science, language development, etc. and computers using multimedia CDs to teach sciences, geography and history are also important learning tools.

~       Rapid acquisition of basic math skills is achieved through the use of number line method which enables the child to physically experiment and act out different combinations of addition and subtraction.                                                                      

  
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