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edited blog on pandemic experience


My experience of teaching-learning during the pandemic.

 Hello everyone.. 
The world was battling against  covid-19 and I was struggling to get connected with my students.Luckily I had a few  contact numbers of my students at the break of lock down and I created my first WhatsApp group and asked my students to add the rest.
There were exchange of  messages and links  related to language, craft but mainly the group supplied with  the official matters along with  few health and safety related issues.
In the month of June the Karnataka Government education department issued orders to create the contact programmes for the students by dividing them in three types.
The first group dealt with students with smartphone and internet access facility .2nd group included students having TV, radio facilities but not the internet connection and the third group comprised of students who had no access to TV ,radio or internet and having only ordinary mobile phones.
 At this time I had created these separate WhatsApp groups. One which had only 8 standard students through which I continued sharing English ,Hindi and social science related learning materials and informing them about TV telecasted lessons.
Second one was of class 7 of which I am the incharge, where I added other subject teachers and shared contents related to the concerned subjects.
The third group was exclusively my personal group of class 8 and 7 and few students of class 6 whom I could access at that time.Here in this group, I took my freedom to share a rhyme with lyrics and an illustrated story each day. Even I was sharing some interesting craft related videos through which most of the students kept themselves busy. I was giving them a handwriting practice exercise every day by sending a picture of a written copy each day.


 At the same time I was doing all sts related works like online admission, TC issuing and other computer based  tasks.
Then , the government ordered us to go to the community , where we were asked to form a locality based groups which included a maximum of 20 students of each locality divided equally among the teachers .Once or twice in a week we were meeting students and briefing them few things and assigning worksheet based homeworks.

After few days we gathered  the students class wise in two batches outside the school premises and started the formal teaching-learning process.
January onwards the government allowed us to have Vidyagama within the school premises. And we  are glad to see our students back in the school. Though it was to be conducted alternative day basis, our students as well as parents insisted to have on daily basis afternoon each day.
I was teaching a new rhyme with actions everyday through which I was trying to enrich their vocabulary and even it was a kind of physical activity for them too.
We were supplied with month based action pla8 which we were supposed to do at that time.
Happy to say that I could create some interest among my students especially towards English language and students gave their full support to  learn English in a fun way.
I had given puzzles,  word grid,  and other such  types of worksheets as writing  exercises.
The challenges which I faced during the pandemic was to make my students work done with their parents support.  Because many of our parents were not ready to give the mobile phones to the students as the kids were using it for other purposes or such...even some of my students had become  lazy and had lost their interest in studies. There were few students who  were supporting their family by working outside.
If in future , such problem or crisis arises I would like to conduct online classes for the students just like private schools , using Google sheets etc.., even padlet which I couldn't do during this pandemic, due to various reasons.
But off course I pray to God Almighty, not to give such situation in future to us...
To conclude, I must say that , this pandemic, made me  fully utilise the modern technology, which I always wanted to introduce to my students. But offcourse, I want to do something more special in future... For that , I need to get equipped with technological knowledge and new pedagogical skills.
Hope through this training  I will be able to achieve my goals.
Anticipating your valuable suggestions,
Yours 
Swetha Savena 🙏

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