Author's Meet
Author's meet-27th August
It is said that “a child who reads will be an adult who thinks”.
We realize that reading is fundamental to functioning in today’s society. It stimulates our imagination and expands our understanding of the world. To enhance the learning of our students, we invited author Supriya Sehgal, the writer of a famous book, A Tigress called, Machhli for Grades 4 and 5 on 27th August.
It was an interactive session full of questions soaring the curiosity levels of our students. The students saw a presentation given by the author. Thereafter all of them enthusiastically participated in the quiz. Our library incharge, SK Riajuddin, presented a token of respect to her.
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EVS Culmination of Grade 5 - Government Systems
Students of grade 5 as a part of their current EVS theme of Government Systems studied about various forms of government and their advantages and disadvantages. As a part of their culmination, a debate competition was held to share their take on the motion - India adopts a Presidential form of government or continue with the Parliamentary form of governance. This also helped them build a global connect and helped them understand the various forms of governance across the world.
Our judging panel included a student, Neeyati Saini of Grade 7 Corbett, Teacher Ms. Yamini and Parent Ms. Nupur Amarnath.
Joy of Sharing
The Joy of Sharing has a very special reason attached to it for us. Our founder Mr.Shiv Nadar's birthday falls on 14th July. Each year, all three schools organize a Fundraiser event.
Grades Nursery to 9 students not just participate but also create, innovate and plan how they can raise maximum funds to support a philanthropic initiative in the city.
In the past we have donated our proceedings to Prakash Deep Trust, SOS school, our own guard who lost her husband and was in financial dire straits. My deepest gratitude to you for supporting the initiative and donating generously to the cause.
The children across grades are busily engaged in creating unique artifacts, paintings, pottery and best out of waste products to sell to you to raise the funds. Many parents have volunteered to put up stalls and sell their creations to contribute substantially.
This year we will be supporting 2 charities-The Earth Saviours Foundation- Gurgaon/ Faridabad Road and SOS Hermann Gmeiner School, Faridabad.
Our Pre-Primary started the day on a joyous note by sharing gift hampers with Didis which included the items that children brought for them. They also made and served tang to the support staff. It was a token of appreciation for the work they do in the school.
Throughout the week children enthusiastically made bookmarks, paper bags and paper bowls reusing newspaper and paper, and bird feeders out of earthen clay for the fund raising event that was held on 19th July 2019. Our young entrepreneurs displayed their marketing skills, and promoted their merchandise with ebullience and vigour. The week came to an end in a jiffy but the values that our children have gained from ‘The joy of sharing week’ will always be a part of them.
The Joy of Sharing began with the ‘Circle Time’ in the primary school where students discussed how to be ethical, respectful, happy and purposeful citizens of society.
Grade 1
Children made beautiful diaries and planted saplings which were put on sale for parents on culmination. They were introduced to values like Kindness, Appreciation, Forgiveness, Helping and Sharing.
Grade 2
The week commenced with the teacher reinstating ‘Why is Joy of Sharing celebrated?’ The students spoke about values like kindness, forgiveness, compassion and empathy. Celebrating the spirit of “Joy of sharing” the children made beautiful craft items using waste material. With great precision the young minds turned the waste materials into beautiful craft items like diaries, tic tac toe, table mats, coasters, lamps and pen holders to name a few.
The children of grade 3 volunteered to make envelopes, multi-organizers and pen-stands out of waste material. From plastic bottles, disposable plates, newspapers and ice-cream sticks to old crayons, students found creative ways to use waste material to create every-day items. The children enthusiastically worked in teams and rejoiced in craft work.
The children of Grade 4 were engaged in making small bags from old jeans or sari’s. They also made natural scrub from coffee and oats. Children were really excited to do the same.
Grade 5 children made different styles of dreamcatchers and wall hangings.They also discussed the need to carry out Fundraising. They also discussed about how they would do it.
The students of the middle school celebrated the JOS by starting the kindness wall where they thanked their friends, mentors and Head of School for their support and encouragement.
The Joy of Sharing culmination saw the students showcasing their marketing and sales skills in convincing the guests to buy the Knick knacks to raise funds. Grade 9 children were engaged in washing cars of the parents.
Co-scholastic department:
School Band Performances:
Western Music had put up a paid band show for Joy of Sharing. Our school band which consists of 5 members played 3 band songs and each song was about 5 mins each in one show. School band had 5 shows on that day. Songs that they chose were very inspirational, rocking and very groovy. A large crowd of parents showed up and thoroughly enjoyed the performances.
Shadow Play:
For Joy of Sharing 2019, Aha Theatre basket of grades 3-4 presented a 7 minute long shadow play - adaptation of the children’s story ‘The Magic Paintbrush’ on 3rd Floor, Theatre Room, North Block. The original plan of doing three shows at one hour intervals, changed due to a bigger footfall of parents and students and the play was performed seven times. This was partly due to the play itself and also, partly, due to the excellent work done by a team of seventh and eighth graders who were handling promotion and ticketing. In total fifty eight parents attended the performance and the whole show went off smoothly.
Musical Instruments Curatorial Presentation:
Aha 7-9 students presented a Lec-Dem on Indian Musical Instruments. The event took place on the 3rd floor Library and kept running in a loop. A range of different instruments like wind, string and percussion instruments were displayed and talked about. Harmonium, Shruti Box, Swar-mandal, Tabla, Pakhawaj, Dholak, Sitar, Tanpura were some of the instruments in the presentation. The historical, social and musical significance of each instrument was thrown light upon. The engineering and making of each instrument was also explained. Concepts of musical notes were demonstrated with full fervor. For music students it was an educational drill that they thoroughly enjoyed. A large number of parents turned up and felt that it was a very nurturing experience overall.
Art and Craft Exhibition cum Sale:
The Art department showcased art and craft creations by Aha Painting, Aha Pottery and Aha Art and Craft students of Grades 3-4, 5-6 and 7-9 on the Ground Floor dispersal area of the North Block. Apart from the rich collection of paintings, pottery and craft items already created by them in their Aha classes, students of different age groups came together to create artifacts like terracotta toys, Warli folders, handmade bags, crafted and recycled bottles as plant holders and show-pieces during the JOS week. The willingness to start from where a peer left, to work with dedication and collaboration were some of the highlights in the learning and contribution by students. The overall theme was organic, re-cycled and handmade. A large number of artifacts were sold to generate a significant amount for the JOS cause.
Sports: Sports department orgainsed Table Table, Squash and Badminton for parents on the culmination day.
This year, few parents put up stalls like cakes and muffins, candles, best from waste, homemade soap, artifactes, peronalised gift cards among others.
It was indeed a fun filled and memorable week for the students. The purpose is to instill the values of gratitude, sharing and expereince the joy of giving.
A glimpse is attached in the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noVjaxJ0xsA
Passion. Commitment. Dedication
Education is one field which is ever growing and ever changing. To keep up the pace, teachers must be life-long learners to be equipped to teach new set of children. Shiv Nadar School firmly believes in a structured professional development for our mentors as it is a key component in creating an effective/joyful learning environment for young children and to enhance or better ones teaching.
With this thought, our teachers Ms. Priya Bansal (Primary Teacher), Ms. Monica Rishi (SEN Pre-Primary) and Ms. Tatiana Arteyeva (Counsellor) conducted a session on Thursday, 23rd May, 2019 for the Primary Teachers. The session was on Social, Emotional, and Ethical (SEE) Learning is an innovative education program developed by Emory University and supported by Dalai Lama.
SEE Learning™ provides educators with the tools they need to foster the development of emotional, social, and ethical intelligence for students and themselves.
SEE Learning™ represents the state of the art in education by enhancing SEL programming with key additional components, including:
- Attention Training
- Compassion and Ethical Discernment
- Systems Thinking
- Resilience and Trauma-Informed practice
This program provides educators with a developmentally-staged curriculum consisting of easy-to-implement lessons, the conceptual framework used to design the curriculum, and resources for educator preparation and development. SEE Learning empowers students to engage ethically as part of a global community and provides educators with the tools to support student well-being.
The teachers were introduced to the SEE Learning curriculum, and experienced the impact of its activities. They got inspired to implement them in class for the better being of the students, teachers and people around. The topics discussed:
- Exploring Kindness - We all want kindness shown to us, because we all want happiness and well-being, and none of us wants sadness, troubles, and difficulties.
- Class Agreements - We all need it and benefit from it by creating a mutually agreed-on list of class agreements that will support a safe, productive learning environment.
- Practicing Kindness - What does it look like when we…?
- Resourcing - Personal resources are internal, external or imagined things that serve to bring about sensations of greater well-being in the body. They are unique to each person.
- Creating a Treasure Chest - Thinking about a personal resource tends to bring sensations of well-being to the body. It is good to have more than one resource, because a particular resource might not work all the time.
- The Resilient Zone - The resilient zone refers to when our mind and body are in a state of well-being. When we are in our resilient zone we can handle the stresses that happen during the day and react with the best part of ourselves. Stress can bump us out of our resilient zone into our high or low zone.
The Literula Week
Imagination, Creativity, Vocabulary, Action, and Thrill.
Stories and books and the love for them is as old the invention of language and that’s why Shiv Nadar School Gurugram celebrated an entire week, "The Literula Week".
Storytelling is a universal and traditional and much-loved art form that features strongly in the Indian culture as an effective and efficient communication tool.
The first day of Literula Week started with eager anticipation in the Nursery corridors. The day was special as parents had been invited to start this very engaging week. The children, as expected, were very excited to see mothers as visitors in their class. The books read out were ‘Brown bear, brown bear’ by Bill Martin Jr or ‘Head to Toe’ by Eric Carle. The mothers did an astounding job by engaging and grasping each child’s attention with voice modulation, props, and puppets. A well-planned craft was accomplished by every child.
On the second day of the Literula week, children went to the Junior and Senior school library, a wonderful way to get acquainted with the books and to inculcate reading habits. Children were thrilled to see books all around. They were also, familiarized with the rules to be followed in the library.
On the third day of the Literula Week, children re-read the initial story, using puppets and props. After listening to it students expressed their creative side by freehand illustrations, which later got compiled into a class book
On the fourth day, senior members, including the Principal and Primary Head, from the Shiv Nadar team visited each class for a storytelling session.
After a week-long celebration, the culmination was full of fun & enthusiasm as children came dressed in their favourite story character for Show and Tell. The corridor was bubbling with laughter and joy throughout the day as each book character come alive through them. To spread the happiness Nursery children went on a character parade crossing through the KG corridor, where KG children cheered them up with claps. Thus ended the very first Literula week for our little ones.
The Kindergarten chose to celebrate author Julia Donaldson’s books, like – A squash and a squeeze, Room on the Broom, Tiddler, The Gruffalo’s child and The Smartest Giant in town. Each class picked one of her books and centred their activities around it. To get the week rolling, Parents and Grandparents were invited for storytelling sessions, followed by craft activities based on the stories. The students were visited by the ‘Book Fairy’, who introduced the children to various parts of a book and taught them how to handle books. Their excitement was doubled when they received bookmarks from her.
The teachers retold the stories, introducing new words, which helped enhance their vocabulary. The enactment by the teachers of the new words learned got the children very excited. The students were later engaged in sequencing the story, this was to develop their aural and recall skills. The students later had the opportunity to listen to other stories written by Julia Donaldson. A reading corner was set up in the foyer. Based, on the story, thought-provoking questions were asked to understand their comprehending skills.
A short visit to the School Junior library was also on the agenda. Here the students were explained the purpose, rules, and regulations of the library by the Librarian. “DEAR”, drop everything and read time was introduced, wherein the students were asked to pick up a book from the class library and read.
The week’s hustle and bustle came to end with a splendid take-away in the form of illustrations by the tiny tots of their favourite word from the ‘word-wall’.
The Primary Section students were not to be out-done by their juniors, they were engaged in diverse literary activities. In order, to motivate the students to read and appreciate the same, each Primary section grade picked on an author, Gr. 2 chose Panchatantra, Gr.3 chose Ruskin Bond, Gr.4 chose Roald Dahl and Gr. 5 chose R.K. Narayan.
Grade 1. A book fairy visited the ‘Books on the roll’. Students loved to learn about the Author David Melling and the main character Hugless Dougless. ‘नन्ही उंगलियाँ ‘brought a lot of warmth & curiosity to discover the book world to our junior brigade. Taking running records of student’s oral reading and asking them comprehension questions via Book drive was a fantastic way to learn about students decoding abilities, fluency, comprehension, and even vocabulary knowledge.
Our students completely relished the story session with the grandparents. They put a great show while sharing their favourite book.
Children explored the elements of the story, understanding the main character of the story. It was inspiring to see the little brains at work analyzing their favorite stories. They used the best of their imagination and creativity to illustrate the cover page of their own story with an interesting title.
Mr. Bear's bookmark "Books on a roll" installation to stories, illustration, finger impressions, and discussion sessions truly help each one us turn into engaged readers.
Grade. 2 storytelling sessions by Parents and Grandparents were much enjoyed. They discussed the morals as well as values of the story, like the “The Elephants and the Hares”. They learned that we must look for solutions and live together peacefully. To boost the creativity and imagination the children prepared a cover page for the story and wrote about their favorite character.
Grade. 3 learned about the Ruskin Bond’s life, interests, style of writing, stories, characters, etc., from their peers, the 4th graders, who dressed up like the celebrated author and visited all the sections. Guessing the books from their covers, a summary of a few of Bond’s short stories had the children hooked. They tried their hand at story writing from a story map, creating their own stories based on Ruskin Bond story titles. Writing their own little novels with illustrations, designing the cover page, was indeed a novel experience.
The 4th Graders dressed up as Roald Dahl, visited their peers, talking and asking questions about his life and work. This led to various activities revolving around Roald Dahl’s books in the form of making a timeline of his life and works. Each section created book covers of the books they choose from Roald Dahl’s repertoire. They kept in mind all the details, the title, author’s name, illustrations, theme, funny blurbs and even the price of the books.
Gr. 5, followed suit when one of them dressed up as R.K. Narayan and spoke about his life journey and body of work, following it up with a power point presentation. Students jotted notes to create a timeline of the celebrated author. A chapter reading from ‘The Malgudi School days’ led to a story discussion and filling up the chapter review sheets. They created beautiful booklet covers keeping in mind the essentials of the story.
Grandparents of Grade II -V came prepared with scripts, props, and after-story activities for the children, for the storytelling event. A warm and engaging experience reinforced the impact of learning via storytelling. The children expressed their gratitude with ‘Thank You” notes to the Grandparents. The culmination was the ‘Gallery Walk’, where the students walked around, observed and read the cover pages, novels, and booklets prepared by other grades students.
Storytelling, enactments, and interactions, putting pen/pencil/crayons to paper to create their own stories with pictures in the form of books. Each activity was curated age appropriately and were all integrated to maximize the fun and learnings. The ‘Literula Week’ definitely rekindled the love for reading, writing and creating books. The classrooms and corridors bear testimonials of the fun our children had through the week.
Readers make Leaders!
The students of grades 6-8 had the privilege of meeting Mrs. Subhadra Sen Gupta, a popular author who writes fiction and non-fiction for students and adults alike. We believe that Author on campus is a beautiful learning experience for students that inspire them to imagine, create, and pen dowm their own thoughts.
She regaled the students with stories of Jahanara and Mughals. The students were enthralled with her stories about Mughals and seemed inquisitive to know and explore more.
Her stories about Mughals, peacock throne and the Kohinoor was well received by the students and teachers alike.
The session ended with students thanking the author for an enlightening session and gifting her a painting made by one of the students as a gesture of appreciation.
'Our Planet'
As a part of building their understanding about the theme for this year's Wild Wisdom Quiz, students went to WWF auditorium, Lodhi Estate, New Delhi for an official screening of first episode of Netflix series, ‘Our Planet’. Apart from our school, there were representatives of few reputed Delhi based schools like Manav Sthali School, Springdale School.
Students learnt about the biomes of Earth and the flora and fauna which flourishes in these biomes. The video was not only knowledge gaining but also reflecting as to how this flourishing species of flora and fauna is diminishing and in turn our planet is being affected due to human intervention. Students made notes and also participated in the quiz based on the episode. Few of our students won bookmarks for giving correct answers to the questions.
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Author Visit: Ms. Nandana Sen
Shiv Nadar School, Faridabad hosted the award-winning actor, screenwriter, author and child-rights activist, Ms. Nandana Sen on Monday, 15th April to talk about her new book, Talky Tumble of Jumble Farm. Just like her distinct filmography and pronounced presence on screen, Sen introduced the kids to her book with zealous energy. She took the children on a journey through a farm of antonyms, anagrams, synonyms, and much more with the protagonist of her book, Talky. The energy in the room was palpable after Sen started her presentation and the students immensely enjoyed the illustrated narrative. Talky
Visit to the historic Lal Qila
Students of grade 8 and 7 visited the strategically important monument of Delhi being the capital city for a good two hundred years of the Mughal rule later taken over by the British. The citadel Lal Qila or Red Fort was built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in 1638 with red sandstone, took nearly a decade to complete along with the new city named as Shahjahanbad. Students experienced the grandeur of the monument in the one kilometre walk along it to the entrance of the monument from Lahori gate.
They were interested to know about the moat around the fort the purpose of constructing them. The great height of the wall with vents and towers used by soldiers to keep guard and vigilant eye on the city surrounding it fascinated the students. To their right they were shown the towering minarets of Jama Masjid, the rising steeples of the Jain Bird Hospital and the Gauri Shankar white and gold Nagara style temple beside it.
Students were excited and awed by the structure as they assembled at the entrance.Students visited the First War Of Independence Museum in the vicinity and got interested in the visuals and facts they were learning from the presentations. The vast expanse of the fort with the Diwan- a-Aam and the difference in architecture in comparison to Diwan-a-Khas was discussed with the students. It was a very fruitful visit for the students
