Experiments with education: Open Period Excitement

I have just started my second year of teaching. As any teacher will tell you, one year experience is nothing to brag about. Anything we do in the classroom (even if tried and tested by others) is always an experiment because the students and their mood is always different. This series is probably going to have short posts on what we are doing in our class and school. The first one is about our open periods.

Starting this year, we have kept a few periods for other things apart from teaching regular content. One such period is the 'Open Period' which happens once a week. Even I am not quite sure of the definition but I envision it as a period where we learn about things we are interested in (basically something more than the textbooks about fascinating things). So we take a poll and come up with a topic and then, we learn about it the next week. The kids have taken a liking to this period faster than I thought and there's a buzz in the air when I walk in to the class. I think the related colour printout on the wall has something to do with it. :-D

One of these weeks, the topic was 'Why do people hunt tigers?' 

I was very impressed that kids asked me this question. It went in with our theme of "ANIMALS" for this unit. I am really proud of the handout that I made for this period (*Pats self*). I was able to integrate the Science and the Geography  topics that we had been studying in the week. Five senses in science and National Parks and wildlife in Geography. NCERT and google were the main resources used. 

Images of the handout are below. Feedback and suggestions are most welcome.  

The colour printout depicting the magnificent Royal Bengal Tiger along with the hunting and poaching

  Talking about the senses of the Tiger + A colouring sheet (yay!). Sometimes I feel that the only thing they take away from the lesson is the drawing sheet. Sigh! On the other side, there's information and relation with geography.