Tiny tots in tears, reluctantly entering their classrooms, slightly older children grinning at the sight of their friends after a couple of months, and chirpy teenagers walking into school compounds in groups were scenes across the city, as schools reopened on Wednesday.
Long wait over
It has been a relatively long wait for the commencement of the academic year 2011. In addition to the reopening after a longer vacation, the recent developments with regard to the syllabus and school fees made the beginning more eventful.
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According to sources in the office of the Chief Educational Officer of Chennai District, schools in the city have been briefed about how to hold the classes over the next week.
Nearly 300 schools in the city were given reports of their revised fee structure on Wednesday.
Following the recent Supreme Court Order directing a detailed study of the syllabus as per the Samacheer Kalvi initiative by an expert committee, schools are trying to structure classroom sessions based on concepts, in the absence of textbooks of any particular syllabus. While some schools held classes based on the textbooks used in their institution earlier, others have decided to dedicate the next few weeks to concepts, spoken English, vocabulary building and science laboratory sessions.
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Activity Based Learning
At a Panchayat Union Middle School near Guduvanchery, the primary sections had classes as per the Activity Based Learning methodology. “We [teachers] made a short video of the activities held last year and achievements of students, and screened it so that the newly admitted children get an idea,” said a teacher.
Class IV student K. Swetha said she was taught multiplication tables from 1 to 12 and there were no textbooks. “We also did a few addition, subtraction, multiplication and division problems. I have to write some tables as homework,” said the student.
Reopening day also saw traffic bottlenecks in several localities across the city, including Adyar, Santhome, Mylapore, Nungambakkam and Anna Nagar.