Not long ago, when the millennials were school students, most of them relied on the teachers to spoon-feed them with the answers that were important for the exams. The trend of filling in the answer sheets as per the bookish language, was considered to be a sign of intelligence of the student. However, with the changing times, being a bookworm has become outdated, as experiential and creative learning has proven to be more effective for a student’s mind. This Children’s Day, it is time to acknowledge the benefits of experiential learning to ensure that our children understand the importance of learning beyond textbooks knowledge.
Being a Bookworm- #NotSoCoolForSchool
Books are indeed our best friends, but to mug up every word by word of a book isn’t its true purpose. One must understand that books are an avenue to expand horizons of knowledge and imagination. With this concept, the term “experiential learning”, has paved its way as a trending topic on educational platforms.
What is Experiential Learning?
Experiential learning focuses on providing learners with meaningful, hands-on experiences. After engaging in these activities, learners reflect on their experiences and discuss them with peers to analyse the challenges they encountered and how they addressed them. The next phase involves generalisation, where learners connect their insights to real-world situations and explore how these lessons can be applied in both similar and diverse contexts.
Inspired by this teaching methodology, the NCERT director Dinesh Prasad Saklani, mentioned that “Learning has to be joyful, not stressful”. He emphasises that children must be encouraged to think innovatively. With this aim and with alignment to the National Education Policy 2020, the STEM pedagogy has been introduced to ensure that students garner quality and conclusive education through experiential learning.
With additions of modules to understand the country’s development and achievements, along with yoga the aim is to offer students a holistic learning environment that enhances their learning skills and fosters their ability to be intrigued beyond bookish knowledge.
Is STEM the way to go?
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) is the new pedagogy that has been introduced for young learners to have a conclusive experiential learning experience where their mental skills are expanded to enhance their curiosity, problem-solving skills, self confidence through learning and task accomplishment ability.
Benefits of STEM Education
- Out of the box thinking
Through STEM, educators can interact with students through practical experiments that can give students a first hand experience. Through STEM, students and educators can create a learning environment that pushes both of them to think out of the box solutions, rather than following the traditional approaches.
- Real Learnings go a long way
Something that has been learned through experiments makes a bigger and impactful sensory experience. Therefore, STEM promotes an authentic learning experience where students are trained to tackle real life and world problems. The objective is to train students from an early age to think and act for the bigger and real world, so that from the start, they have adapted critical thinking skills giving them an edge to be ready to face any sort of challenges in their future.
- Keep Curiosity out of the bag
One of the primary benefits of STEM education is that it encourages students to be curious. As it is an interactive pedagogy, STEM is based on discovery, discussion, ideation and innovation encouraging students to keep their minds open for new learnings. It makes the learning process engaging to be discussed and practised beyond the classroom, keeping students curious to learn more.
- Better Social Skills
STEM encourages students to learn the value of working together. With practical experiments done together as a team, this method of learning often helps students to communicate better, have an increased sense of patience and enthusiastic participation skills fostering a sense of confidence and better communication skills from very early on.
Children’s Day & STEM for all
As India’s educational reforms adopt new pedagogical approaches such as STEM and STEAM, it has become imperative to ensure that every child regardless of their socio-economic background, is given the opportunity to garner quality education through STEM and STEAM education.
India’s Rural educational landscape has improved over the years, with an increased number of girl child students in schools and less drop out rates, however, the challenges like lack of quality education and educators, safer space for girl child in schools, gender inequality in classrooms and accessibility still prevail.
Therefore, in such a scenario, Smile Foundation has been working closely with socially economically disadvantaged communities of India ensuring that children from such communities do not get left behind from the ambit of quality education.
Our Mission Education programme has adapted itself to the principles of the NEP 2020 thereby ensuring that our teaching modules are aligned with STEM education so that our students also leverage on the benefits of STEM education, grooming themselves with critical thinking and problem solving skills, enabling them to be confident learners who too are ready for the real world challenges.
To provide a comprehensive and healthy learning environment for our students, under our Shiksha Na Ruke campaign, we have established-
- 12 STEM locations where students have been given STEM DIY kits for experimenting their learnings.
- English and Science labs, along with Maths learning tool kits
- Green infrastructure, Digital classrooms, solar panels, smart class installations, learning software and education tablets.
- Career guidance, counselling and regular life skilling sessions
- Extracurricular activities provisions by supporting students with sports material and musical instruments
Our goal is to foster a scientific mindset in our students by providing them with the training and resources needed to enhance their critical thinking skills, promote a deeper understanding through inquiry and logical reasoning, and prepare them to thrive in the competitive workforce of tomorrow.
With the support of our partners, we have witnessed the positive results of STEM education in the development of our students. This approach is empowering our learners to harness the transformative benefits of STEM, equipping them with the essential skills needed to face the challenges of the real world with resilience and innovation.
Join Us This Children’s Day
If you believe that many more children should be empowered with the opportunity to sharpen their skills and unlock their full potential this Children’s Day, partner with us in spreading education and smiles to our young learners.
