Solid Rocket Boosters separation complete. The Lightyears have finished their Unit 1 exams successfully. The mission is on course with full throttle.

After having spent the last one month preparing for their Unit Tests, our Lightyears finally gave their exams over the past fifteen days. The data is highly encouraging and shows us that our kids have started doing something even more important than learning itself, i.e. desiring to learn, or as we call it, the ‘I Want’ phenomenon.

Riya has finally told her mother that she can understand what ‘language’ bhaiya uses in class. Harsh can now talk in English without resorting to the use of ‘Bhaiya, How do I say this in English’ rule. 36 other Lightyears have similar stories of small successes and have displayed a spark for being eager to learn. This month is for hope and hardwork.

A beaming Radheshyam, after buying himself

a one month fee Scholarship in exchange of

35 Space Dollars!

THE MONTH THAT WAS…

The Lightyears classroom, was stripped bare of

all its sheen during the exams. Students from

senior classes were supposed to sit there and

hence the seating arrangement was made back

to the old school design, two straight arrays of

desks, displaying complete lack of multi-

dimensional to education. Siddarth was always

sad during the exams for this reason. “Sir, Sir,

when will you put the Mat on? When will we

have the Superstar team of the Week up? Sir,

this old arrangement is borrring! Change it sir!”

Finally, on 1st of October we got our class back

and all the Lightyears united in their Mission

Control room, reinstated to its former glory.

We start with our midyear assessment at the

end of the month so the focus on academic

achievement is high. Making time for value

building activities becomes really scarce in such

situations. Hence, on 2nd of October, which was

otherwise a holiday, the Lightyears came to

school for a special Workshop on Gandhi

Jayanti. The workshop made kids emulate

Gandhian responses to typical real life

problems. It was fascinating to see how much

these kids absorb from the society without us

being aware of it. I hope they will display some

Gandhism in their life and behaviour.

The Lightyears also got Space

dollars for their performance in exams.

And with their kitty full again, many of them

made purchases in the Saturday Space Market.

Apart from the usual purchase of cool pencils,

Radheshyam bought himself a month long

scholarship. He will not pay the fee for the next

one month!

ACADEMIC PROGRESS

We covered the following few objectives in the Maths and English in the first month:

Place Value up to Tens (65% Average class mastery)

Place Value up to Hundreds (66% students are Genius)

Number names and Base 10 Expanded form – (56% Average class mastery)

Sight Words- Pre-Primer list (80% students are Genius, i.e. on above 80%)

Sight Words Primer list (25% students are Genius)

Skip Counting by 2,5, and 10 (68% Average class mastery)

Comparison 2 digit numbers using Greater sign and the lesser sign (93% Average class mastery)

Comparison 2 digit numbers using Greater sign and the lesser sign (72% Average class mastery)

Reading Comprehension overall Unit mastery (Class Average 60%, 30% of the class is on track to the overall End of the Year growth goal of 1.5 years)

Identifying the Title of a book (53% Average class mastery)

Identifying the Author of a book (57% Average Class mastery)

Infer theme/genre of the book from its cover ( 73% Average class mastery)

Distinguish between Fact and Fantasy (69% Average class mastery)

Infer the Main idea of the story using the major events (45% Average class mastery)

Jheel Rani, our mission captain (class monitor) has

topped the entire second standard with 90% in all the

subjects. As it happens to be, we also have students

who are still getting 10% and are unable to

comprehend words and letters than to be involved in

reading comprehension.

For the month ahead, we plan to focus on

using technology to bring more joy and

efficiency to our class. After much research

we have zeroed down on using an Ipad along

with a projector to digitize our classroom. This

shall help get more out of each

lesson that we plan.

Every day seems shorter and every holiday a

loss of instructional hours! But the simple joy

that Lightyears exhibit while learning

something keeps us going.

Koshtub ‘Lightyear’ Bhaiya