The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has developed an alternative academic calender for school students to engage them meaningfully as they stay at home during the lockdown imposed to fight COVID-19.
The calendar was released by Union HRD Minister RameshPokhriyal ‘Nishank’ on Thursday.
“The calendar provides guidelines to teachers on theuse of various technological tools and social media tools available forimparting education in fun-filled, interesting ways, which can be used bylearner to learn even while at home. However, it has taken into account, thevarying levels of access to such tools-Mobile, Radio, Television, SMS andvarious social media.
“The fact that many of us may not have internetfacility in our mobiles, or may not be able to use different social mediatools- such as Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter and Google, the calendar advisesteachers to further guide parents and students through SMS on mobile phones ormobile call. Parents are expected to help elementary-stage students toimplement this calendar,” Nishank said.
This minister said all Classes from I-XII and subject areaswill be covered under the alternative calendar, which will also cater tochildren with special needs using links to audio books, radio programmes andvideo programmes.
“The calendar contains week-wise plan consisting ofinteresting and challenging activities, with reference to theme or chaptertaken from syllabus or textbook. Most importantly, it maps the themes with thelearning outcomes. The purpose of mapping of themes with learning outcomes isto facilitate teachers and parents to assess the progress in the learning ofchildren and also to go beyond textbooks,” Nishank said.
The minister also said that all the given activities aresuggestive in nature and neither the prescriptive, nor the sequence ismandatory.
“Teachers and parents may opt to contextualise theactivities and do those activities that the student shows interest in,irrespective of the sequence. This will empower our students, teachers, schoolprincipals and parents to find out positive ways to deal with Covid-19 usingon-line teaching-learning resources and also improving their learning outcomesgetting school education at home,” he said.