Valley view High school

Yes the name sound like a school in a picturesque place...surrounded by a valley. But it aint! Fact is,it doesnt matter..if you can create a right environment and a right ecosystem which fosters learning, it doesnt matter whether the school is in Posh area or in the interiors of a poor community.

I mean how much we read online or in a bold article in a supplement of a daily newspaper or on a blog, like the one i am writing, the reality strikes when you,yourself be a part of the solution to the existing issues. When you go out and explore on your own. Thats what i did,saw,learn and experience at Valley View school.

So Let me introduce the super school to you all:






This is how our school looks like..

Valley view was founded by a Mrs Kulkarni AKA Madam Miss, our lovely principal. This was back in 1994-95. She was done teaching in all these convent schools and thats when the seed of entrepreneurship..starting you own school, where you can do what you want to do, apply your strategies and use your tremendous experience to ignite the young minds was sown.

But interesting thing is THE PLACE where she started the school. It was like a jungle back then,not a safe place, suburbs where the immigrants from other states occupied the land. The place is still well known for criminal activities goes on there.

She started the school with 8 students and today we have around 1200 students in our school.90% of them come from a low-income background. Most of the parents are uneducated and those who are, are the products of VALLEY view only.

Just to give an example, 4-5 teachers in the our school are the alma matter only. The girls who studied in one room school in a local community 14 years back are the class teachers in the very same school. That's what i call a success story!
Cheers to Valley view high school!

The Mini library!

So today I would like to share one important part of our classroom which is still not utilized properly.

A mini-library : Yes, our lovely principal really liked the idea of having mini-libraries in the classroom itself. So that we can have a good collection of story books and invest students in reading.



But i would like to admit that i have not been able to utilize this mini-library in a proper way. But hopefully as the new story books are coming, It will be used to a greater extent now. Also if you like to donate old story books or even buy some new ones for my students, you are more than welcome. Thanks in advance!

Highlight of the day!

Firstly students nailed the 'Time' Assessment. 40 students scored 100% marks on two tested objectives:

1. Student will be able to (SWBAT) read the time (in the multiple of 5s)on a clock.
2. Swbat represent the time on the clock.

So after that it was time for some very good news. I told them about WALT DISNEY approving the 2nd phase of the project. So as a gift, I will be buying 50 new stories books for them. Also gave students new english copies as their story writing notebooks.

So hopefully and surely now they will try their best to write small small stories.
THE BIG GOAL IS TO CREATE A STORY BOOK titled 'The stories of Superstars'.
So will be working on a very specific plan of how to take the students to that level. Scaffolded objectives,proper sequencing, Lots of brainstorming sessions, comprehension, Integration of grammar objectives and most importantly a structured way to track, measure and provide feedback on weekly basis. Fingers crossed!


Picture of the DAY:



Students had a great time while playing musical chair!!

Teaching Time- Student's Clock!

Was teaching time today,so after few foundational concepts, i took the students to the ground and we made our very own Student's clock.
The whole idea was to apply the Socratic Teaching and let the students observe and connect to concepts in practical way.

Students enjoyed the session.

Observation: Students love the practical involvement in the lessons, but one should give clear instructions and also do the fundamental concepts before initiating such an activity.

Learning: Given the fact the weather was HOT, Students were feeling the heat and did loose the interest in b/w as they were thirsty. So a refresher break or doing in two groups simultaneously by asking other staff member for the help!

Proposal for 2nd phase of Design for giving project!

Received a mail from the Walt Disney people and they have approved my proposal with regards to second phase of Design for Giving! So My school will be getting Rs 5000/- to do activities around the theme of our project 'Cleanliness and Hygiene'. Stories books are coming!!!!

Link to the proposal!

Proposal Regarding Design For Giving Contest Valley View High School

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Joy for Giving!

As we celebrated Joy for Giving week in India during October. Riverside school in Ahemdabad, organised a Design for Giving contest. The objective of the contest was to stimulate young idealistic minds to think of social issues/problem and then work out a solution to address the same.

To go to DFG website please click here

My students did a project named "Parivartan" with a focus on spreading awareness regarding Cleanliness and Hygiene.
Link to a small and simple final presentation.

Joy Of Giving Valley View High School, 2nd Grade Students

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The project got selected in Top 100 entries out of 1300 in total. Given the fact this competition was for 5 to 10 grade, for me and my second grades this achievement meant alot!

6 Teach for India fellows schools stood in top 100!

Story writing session...

Me and students discussed about various aspects of a Story. From characters to a plot to a beginning, middle and ending, Title and the moral. Students gave lot of inputs about their fav. characters and what all they want to write about...
The focus was mainly on how to give a structure approach to the story writing. So basically a step by step approach was designed:
1. Decide on few main characters (ideal number 4 to 5)
2. Brainstorming Phase: Then think what all the characters can do and think of various situations. If you can do this with 1 or 2 more students,even better. Team work! share ideas...
3. Then Start with the rough draft and create the initial part. Build the characters.
4. Then Bring in the twist or the main problem/issue..so words like "suddenly" and "Then" will come into picture. Middle part
5.How to solve that problem, what all did the main characters did and words like 'finally' will come into picture. Ending part.

Then revise it, fix the grammatical and spellings by checking from other sources too. Also draw some pictures as we see in our story books.

Think of Name (Title) of the story and Moral-what you learned from the story. (if anything)

Investment/Hook for the kids : Till now you just read other people stories if you can do this we can have 48 stories of our own and we can make a book of our class, the stories of superstars!

P.S: Will share the stories kids wrote in next couple of days.