No school bag Saturdays

Turahalli school is having no school bag day on Saturday. I think it is wonderful initiative to bring out creative aspects of students with fun.

Last week school had Radha Krishna theme costumes with games and this week Clay molding. Enjoyed making ganesha, crocodile, bull, mouse with kids. No fancy clay molding kit, just pure clay with natural decoration with stone and flower. Just loved it...!

15th August 2016: Independence day celebration at our schools

While attending school function on this day, thought came into mind: does students understand  importance of Independence Day or meaning of freedom? But looking at their cheerful dance and smiling faces, felt they are anyway free souls, why they have to get into complex thought process of freedom.

But, I am not sure how many grown-ups have introspected sacrifice and struggle of freedom fighters, what was their dream for free India?

Freedom is great power, but like our spider-man once said: With great power comes great responsibilities. Looks like no one is bothered about second part. Looking at current affairs, feels like, our nation left at the mercy of corrupt wolves and ignorant pigs.  I am sure, our freedom fighters didn't give up their wealth, family and life to see this day.

Wish you Happy Independence Day!

Results of English Evaluation

Last academic year focus was mainly on English learning, though we have seen visible improvements in English learning, to quantify we have assessed learning by taking exams in all 3 different levels as per our course material.
- Level 1: Letter recognition and phonetics.
- Level 2: Word recognition, rhyming words
- Level 3: Sentence and grammar.

Both written and oral exams are conducted of total 25 marks (20 +5). Below is the summary of marks.

Results are OK. While high percentage in written exams is attributed to practice students have gone through, reading results are not good.

These results will be analyzed with teachers and required improvements will be made in current academic year.

Finance report for academic year 2015-2016

Below is the finance report for the year 2015 - 2016.

For academic year 2016 - 2017 we are continuing our initiatives on English teaching and education trip.

Along with regular classes, planning for special courses on personality and communication skill development for teachers and children.

Thanks for your continued support!

Updates: Exam time and 3rd anniversary

Focus for academic year 2015-16 is to improve English learning. For this we have created English course materials for students, sponsored additional teachers and CBH volunteers took regular classes. We see visible improvements in last couple of months, but this has to quantified. Hence we are conducting separate English tests for Class-3 to Class-7 in both schools we are attending. This will help us to know where we stand and plan for next academic year. This should also convey seriousness of our efforts to school staff, on whom we depend most. Tests are starting from next week.

Apart from this, we have completed 3 years of school activities last month. If we look back, we started with lot of enthusiasm and good will to do something for our neighborhood children. But when we came across ground realities of govt school operation and organizing ourselves to handle this... we had become clueless and confused. Thanks to brainstorming session we had before forming the trust and key inputs from experts. Now we have organized our activities and setup specific goals. Its a fulfilling experience for all residents involved. Thanks to all for your support.

Mysore Trip

One of the main objective of Chilume is to facilitate school trip to explore the world around us, it should be both fun and learning experience for students. Our school (Yadalam and Turahalli school) children hardly go for trips, when we went to Vishweshwariah Museum last year, it was first school trip for most of kids. We had few options of taking them to airport, metro ride, Mysore and Agastya Campus. Since they hardly go out of Bangalore, 2-day trip to Agastya campus looked ideal, but it didn't materialize. Hence we planned trip to Mysore covering interesting places for kids, like Zoo, palace and Raganathittu bird sanctuary.

Kids were super excited to see different variety of birds, snakes, crocodiles and not to mention other wild animals. Evening serene boat ride in Ranganathittu will remain in our memory forever. Though they danced all the way to Bangalore while returning, it was easy to handle them in Zoo or Palace due to their lane discipline. Definitely Chilume will be planning many more trips like this in coming years.

Few snaps of trip below: