The theme of the week was “listening”. We all hear and listen. Is there any difference between listening and hearing? And how about Listen to build relationships, to understand others, to able to understand what is spoken, to learn about a topic, to get information to tickle, to stimulate, to create, …
Listening is not only hearing. Active listening is not same as listening. We explored three components of Active Listening – Connect, Clarify and Expand.
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First, connect with the speaker, acknowledge what he or she is feeling, doing, intending – “You are curious”.
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Then ask questions to clarify thinking by accessing more details to help understand self – “Tell me more, What do you think it means? Where all you have heard? What was interesting? What questions you have? What other things would you like to do?
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And further the conversation by asking questions, or providing data or stories or ideas to use them as triggers to expand thinking more – “What about this, What are our views about? What all we could do? What kind of actions you think people can do which you will not like to happen? Would you like to know why people do these kinds of things?
A simple exercise to listen to two people made us realize that there is so much to LISTEN!
And while we explored listening at Aarohi this week, we continued with our life – learning from people around us, making and creating Hammock (for many of us it was new term), a day of football training with a parent coach, cooking, experimenting, researching, arranging couple of trips, planning for community Marathon, repairing, carpentry, electrical installation, dreaming and planning about new building and so on.
A session with Sreedharan to understand working of DNA testing in a lab at Hyderabad, And as the session started someone asked “What is DNA?” Is it electron? Dies it controls our brain performance? Is it in nucleolus? What is DNA and RNA? Can you see RNA and DNA? How does it creates the duplicate copy of itself? What does DNA do? And we heard about – Enzymes, Protein, Molecules, RNA, DNA, Nucleus, Brain activities, Chromosomes, Boy or a girl? change in DNA creates huge changes, male or female, combination of Chromosomes. distinguish male and female, external features, birds gender determined by WW and ZW chromosomes. Traders, Breeders, Hobbyist, Bird sanctuaries, DNA testing to know about gender, PCR polymerised chained reaction to be able to see the DNA with naked eye…some of the terms were new, some were very new. Some terms we understood, for some terms we got curious.
A session with Dauren, A traveller from Kyrgyzstan, to know about his life as a traveller. He took us through the journey of his country – a country full of mountains and snow.
A session on “Association and Dissociation” to know the resources inside us. We all are an amazing well of resources. Some of us are able to access these resources effortlessly. The tool of association to know that it’s
Imagine a learning community for children (and adults) where there is no curriculum –
Imagine aarohi where there is no teaching
Imagine aarohi where there are no classes
Imagine aarohi where there are no tests and exams
Imagine Aarohi, a life education, where learning happens because children want to learn from their life – for their life.