Second week of CHORD school programme

Friends,
The blog is continuation of writ up on our visits to CHORD school.
Last Saturday was the second visit to CHORD school. We were happy that students remembered our names. Tejo, one of the volunteers narrated one story about "When do we stop questioning". It was interesting. The moral of the story was that we should ask questions at appropriate time otherwise we may miss the actual information. He asked students about the moral of the story. Many were able to answer but in Telugu..We asked them to tell the same in English. With few attempts many were successful. Interesting part was that one of the students came to tell the story.

The second story was about "Think out of box- Lateral Thinking". It was about money lender and farmer's daughter. This story goes like this. A farmer was in debt to a crooked moneylender who was fond of farmer's daughter. One day he went to farmer with officials, expressed his desire to marry her and he proposed that he would cancel the debt for his daughter. But farmer rejected the offer and pleaded for more time to pay the debt. Then moneylender came up with another option. He would take two pebble one white and another black. If farmer's daughter picks white one then she would not have to marry him and farmer will get time to pay the debt and if she picks black one then she has to marry him and the father would have all the time he needed to pay off his debts at a favorable rate. Then money lender went to pick the pebbles from the road with number of black and white pebbles. Farmer's daughter noticed that he picked up two pebbles rather than one white and one black. He asked her to pick one pebble. She decided instantly and as she drew the stone out she fumbled it and quickly dropped it. The stone mixed with those on the road and was lost among all the others before anyone could identify it. “Oh dear!” she exclaimed. “How clumsy of me!” Then she explained. “But it is ok,” she said calmly. “We can simply look in the bag and see which color pebble remains inside. Then we will know the color of the pebble I had picked.” The officials looked in the bag and saw the black pebble. Therefore, they assumed, the farmer’s daughter had picked the white pebble which meant she did not have to marry the moneylender and her father would have more time to repay his debts at favorable rates.
This story was regarding "Lateral Thinking".

Tejo gave one puzzle to make them think out of box. The puzzle is that one basket contains six eggs. Six eggs have to be distributed to six persons. But condition is that one egg should remain in the basket. We asked students to solve it. One boy came up with answer but had difficulty in telling that in English. We helped him to speak up in English. Few students volunteered to tell the answer in English. We made most of them to tell the answer. We were able to cover most of the students.
Just after the break, we played video "Mind your language" which is fun video on communication.

Next Praveen gave small presentation on Aeronautics. He has chosen this topic because in first session, couple of boys expressed their interest in Aeronautical Engineering as their career option. The presentation went well. They asked doubts and Praveen clarified most of them.

In the meantime Rajesh, Kranthi and myself asked three students (one girl and two boys) to perform skit which is in the video we played for them. We rehearsed the skit in separate room during presentation. After rehearsal three of them performed the skit in front of their friends. It was awesome. We had more fun than we had when we watched the video.

These were the activities of second week. Next week we are planning to take up grammar classes, however, with activities. Will come up with more posts on the coming sessions.

Visit to CHORD school

Hey friends,
After so many days came up with my experience during visit to CHORD school. This school is run by some NGO in Bachupally. They are providing free education to the poor children or semi-orphans upto 12th standard. I like the way they take the initiation to provide help to the needy. Every time I see the children begging near traffic signals or near some gates I feel can I make any difference to them.Earlier I used to think that I should have some power or authority to offer help to them. But now after visiting couple of schools (NICE school in Guntur district and Bachupally school) I came to know that we don't need any authority to offer help. The only two things we need is heart to help the needy and determination to help them. With these we can extend our hand to help them. They are not different from us. They are also human beings and they too have right to live their lives as they want. The life they are spending on roads is not because of their choice. Owww.. I have gone too far. Coming back to our visit to CHORD school.
The person named Suman who is among the board members running the school contacted our corporate to extend the help to the children. Students in +1 and +2 don't have full time English teacher. Also they need to improve in communication skills since after 12th standard they have to go out and seek the job appropriate to that level of education. We planned some activities for 2 hours like small introductory session, games related to communication etc.
Seven of us from our office (different groups) visited the school on Saturday i.e. 23rd Jul. The school is in 4-storey building. It is residential school. Suman talked to us first in his office and told about the students, their drawbacks, what they needed and how we can help them. Later he clubbed the students of 11th standard and 12th standard. I observed that many of them were not wearing slippers. Many were shy. Looking at us they were whispering among themselves.
Small introductory session was given by Rajesh(my teammate). We selected few students and asked them to give brief introduction of their best friends. It was fun. One of the two friends is confident and one is shy. For some the friends even their favourite actors are same :). We observed their introduction, asked them to repeat the introduction with few corrections. Next we introduced ourselves and asked our names again. Rajesh's name was heard loudly :). The next activity was Jumbled Words. We divided 40 students into four groups A,B,C and D.
I wrote the words jumbled and asked each group. Very few were active but they were helping their teammate in finding out the word. It went for one hour. Their mentor asked to take a break. But they were shouting that they don't want break. We felt happy at least we could keep up their interest with our activities. Even though they didn't want the break we took 10 minutes break.
After break we gave jumbled sentences. They answered many of them. Last activity was Dumb Charades. Paromita explained them how to play like how to show English, Telugu or Hindi word, how many words etc. They found difficulty in the first query. It was Lion's Tail. I showed it to them. I love this game and I am good at this one. I hesitated to act in front of our colleagues and students. But then I thought I came here to make them speak confidently and to teach them how to overcome shyness and now I am hesitating, I should not feel shy or hesitate in the first place. So, I signalled the word to them. They found the word with few attempts. Later we gave couple of words and they enjoyed the game. Their mentor came to remind us that time was over. He picked of couple of guys to come up in front of the class and introduce themselves to each other. They were tough guys. It took 15 minutes for us to make them ask each other's names. Later we sent back them to their places without completing their introduction. It happens like that in such schools. Few will be active. Many of the students in villages feel shy to speak in front of the audience. We appreciated the active guys in each team. I must mention girls team scored high :).
At the end we talked with Suman. He got excited about fund collection. I must not mention that stuff. Overall the visit was awesome. We planned some activities for next weekend. We are planning to make these visits valuable and useful to them. They have to overcome their shyness now itself since they have to look for the jobs immediately after 12th standard. Most of them can't go for graduation. If we make them to build their communication skills then we would be able to make some difference as I mentioned in first para.
Will post more updates on the activities in the coming weekends :)