The School Education Department is organising a mega parent meeting on Saturday (April 29) to appraise parents of their wards’ progress and also to motivate them to encourage their children to take up certain activities in the summer vacations in remedial learning and creativity, besides working on their preparedness for the next academic year.
Department officials intend to utilise the services of village and ward volunteers to mobilise parents to this crucial meeting that intends to ensure that students are provided a platform to develop their interests and hobbies during the holidays. “We want the involvement of the community to see that children are engaged in age- and class-appropriate activities during the holidays,” said School Education Commissioner S. Suresh Kumar, adding that the officials would like to see continuation of the ‘We Love Reading’ programme and free distribution of activity work sheets developed by Pratham to all students of Classes III to V.
It may be noted that the annual exams for students of Classes I to V were over on April 25 and those in Classes VI to IX completed them on April 28, barring the Sanskrit paper scheduled on April 29. The department is working out a plan to keep the children busy in creative and productive summer activities.
‘We Love Reading’
Under the ‘We Love Reading’ initiative, efforts are being made to help students effectively utilise school libraries, which in turn will inculcate a reading habit in them, thus hopefully making them independent lifelong readers.
The department officials envision a scenario where students exchange books in their villages and wards, with them being encouraged to read as many books as possible. “Competitions based on storytelling, reading and writing will be organised after schools reopen,” said Mr. Suresh Kumar.
To ensure that the plan of action materialises, headmasters and teachers have been asked to take up certain tasks. The headmasters should instruct teachers to adopt students, provide them a space for distribution of books from the school library and inform parents about the ‘We Love Reading’ activities, while teachers will follow the instructions on the distribution of library books and adopting a few students besides forming a WhatsApp group, post a story everyday in the group and monitor whether the students were reading books.
The department also plans to conduct online competitions for students in story reading, drawing and story writing.
