PLANNING MELA – It’s simple – Each child set up their planning stall, shared term planning with others in the community, others added value in their planning by listening and questioning, we got to learn from each other. Imagine, Aarohi an Open Learning Community where Open also means Aarohi is open to all kinds of learning – no particular learning is higher or lower than another learning. Each child decides what he or she wants to do/learn. Parents, facilitators and peers may suggest or influence these choices, but the decision is always the child’s.
How do we plan what we want to do? What we should do? Well, sometimes tools help us to get a broader picture of our own planning and decision of what we want to learn. A simple tool of “Five buckets” – to help us to get a broader picture of our own planning and decision of what we want to learn
Basic skills
Development of Interest (skills)
Community Contribution
Making/Creating Bucket
Self and Social development
It’s not only my bucket, imagine five buckets of each member – it’s cumulative and that’s the magic of the community.
Each one of us decided what we wanted to put in that bucket.
For BASIC SKILLS, one thought that learning Hindi is important, while others gave priority to grow own food. Some choices were Maths, 10th preparation, Languages like Kannada, Hindi, Tamil, and English, Interaction with people, writing, basic cooking, chemistry, physics, using computers, and so on.
For the DEVELOPMENT of INTEREST, one was enthralled to make a movie while one chose to work on the land. Some more choices were craft, music, drumming, cubing, archery, coding, computer programming, website designing, electronics, football, yoga, dance, Pottery, singing, playing various musical instruments, astronomy, bird watching, trekking, cycling, computer languages, mapping, gardening, carpentry, movie making, videos making, cinematography, drawing, biology, animals, learn languages like Japanese, acting, coloring, basketball, business, angel research, and so on
For MAKING and CREATING, one was interested to make bookmarks, while others want to make tree circles. Some more choices were science experiments, making products with crochet, make earrings and bookmarks, make a cloth hanger, make a dagger, etc.
In SELF and SOCIAL,one was interested to improve communication, while others want to work on hygiene. Some more choices were a presentation, interaction with others, anger management, alternatives to hitting, understanding emotions, being active, improve interaction, learning to say no, knowing intuition, etc.
Imagine, Aarohi, A Learning is the core purpose, and the whole world is our curriculum. The whole campus, its infrastructure, its resources and processes, all are designed to offer value addition to a child’s learning. Every space like the kitchen, toilets, resource rooms etc – all are designed keeping in mind that each interaction is a source of learning. And the community is how we live, how we learn.