SHIKSHANTARAM

JMIS-SHIKSHANTARAM 
A unique & innovative curriculum
“What happens in classrooms produces the architecture for any good school of the future. Bricks and mortar cannot transform education.”
 
Why curriculum innovation?
What’s a curriculum for?
A school curriculum is intended to provide children and young people with the knowledge and skills required to lead successful lives. Today, there is growing concern that the taught curriculum needs to be reconsidered and redesigned. 

What is a curriculum for at this time? It comprises a challenging selection of subjects that help children and young people understand the world. It highlights skills necessary for learning throughout life, as well as for work, and for one’s personal development and well-being.

A curriculum fundamentally establishes a vision of the kind of society we want in the future and the kind of people we want in it: it decides what the ‘good life’ is for individuals and for society as a whole.

The Premise of our curriculum design
To design a curriculum that is relevant and appropriate to the needs of today’s children, the content, teaching methods, and co-curricular activities have been streamlined and reorganized around the following aims:–

  • Enabling all children to become successful learners 
  • Providing them opportunities to develop as confident individuals
  • Creating a value-based climate for children to grow up as responsible citizens.
  • Designing a transformational Curriculum that has the potential to rejuvenate subjects, enhance interdisciplinary learning, and create meaningful and sustainable connections with the ‘real world’ that children experience outside the school and link academic and vocational knowledge and skills more coherently.

What is meant by ‘curriculum innovation’ and ‘innovation in teaching and learning’ is being creative and innovative in terms of what is taught, and how it is taught. Simply put, we view the school curriculum as the bedrock for exciting, new, and innovative classroom approaches. We have been able to work towards this transformation only because we see the planning, research, and practice are seen as a triangular framework for reconsidering and renewing curriculum design and related classroom practices.

Student Development through the curriculum:
  • Child-first: The Child is at the center of the entire vision of Shikshantaram. The Child is all - the means, the purpose, and the outcome.
  • Opportunity for all: All the children to get equal opportunities to excel in their life in their own special way. Everyone to get chance to participate in all the school programmes and activities.
  • Competition with self: Competition is only a motivating tool for us that encourages children to push their limits and drives them to bring out the best in themselves. However, we promote competition with ourselves rather than with each other. It is about raising the bar from level to level once a child attains it. In the process, no one loses and everyone wins.
  • Sampoorn Vyaktitv (Overall Excellence): The learning programme must look at developing the whole individual with a versatile all-rounded personality by training the head, heart, body, and conscience through a Conceptual Interdisciplinary Academic Programme integrated with Enrichment Activities for multi-dimensional exposure, Cultural Education in performing and visual art, physical education in games, sports, health and fitness, character building through value education and life-skill programme & technical education through computer-based and technology-enabled learning programme.
  • Inspiring School Climate to develop values, emotional/social & other life-skills in children: Though our curriculum is enriched with several out-of-box programmes specially designed to inculcate life-skills and values in young children, like, circle-time, school-cinema, inspire-time, yoga, whole school meditation, Katha, open-house, class-presentations in morning assemblies, film-time & reflection, Hamari panchayat, promise-life skill programme, guest-speak, reading for enrichment, speak-your-mind, extempore, theatre-in-education, story-telling-sessions, Dus ka Dum morning ritual, personality plus, etc, we emphatically believe in creating an overall inspiring climate in our entire school where values and life skill wisdom is interwoven across its length and breadth & where each individual and each programme walks the talk and inspires through role-modeling.
  • Activity-based Curriculum: The curriculum design of JMIS encourages our children to participate in multi-dimensional school activities that help them to discover their innate talents. We are glad that the National Curriculum Framework endorses this view of ours. According to the CCE guidelines given by the CBSE board children will be evaluated on their co-curricular activities along with sports. If we have to enhance the self-esteem of children, the best way to do it is to expose them to platforms where they can explore their talents. The boost it gives to their self-esteem and self-confidence is amazing, better still this confidence rubs off on other areas of their lives. For example, the confidence painters or debaters get from their events gives them the confidence to face exams better or handle real-life situations better. In addition to confidence-building the school co-curricular activities, events, and competitions teach a lot of other important life lessons, values, and life skills to children.
  • Avid Readers & Writers: Reading and writing programme is significantly focused at to develop children with remarkable language proficiency through a very thoughtfully designed language curriculum, reading for enrichment, DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) programme, creative writing schedules, Literary contests, Innovative formative assessments in language, activity clubs, workshops and lots of other activities. 
  • Effective Communicators: Communication is crucial to belonging, being, and becoming. Children are social beings who are intrinsically motivated to exchange ideas, thoughts, questions, and feelings. Children feel a sense of belonging when their home language, interaction styles, and ways of communicating are valued. They have the right to be continuing users of their home language/Hindi particularly in the period assigned for Hindi language but besides that English is the compulsory CAMPUS LANGUAGE for communication throughout. Competence in English communication along with the home language is vital for successful learning across the curriculum. Literacy and language competence is the capacity, confidence, and disposition to use language in all its forms. It is developed through our specialized language development programme and is complemented by a wide range of activities and practices across the curriculum which include music, movement, poetry, role-play, dance, theatre, debate, discussions, reviews, power-point presentation, creative writing, storytelling, DEAR,  print-rich classrooms and corridors, visual arts, performing art, media and drama as well as talking, listening, viewing, reading and writing. To grow up into life-long learners, our children also learn to use information and communication technologies to access information, investigate ideas, and represent their thinking.
  • Teaching-Learning based on Multiple Intelligences: Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences honors and promotes the development of all seven avenues of intelligence in young children - Verbal/Linguistic, Logical/Mathematical. Musical, Visual/Spatial, Kinesthetic, Interpersonal & Intrapersonal This approach provides a framework to identify how children learn; to build on their strongest assets; to help them become more intelligent by exposing them to a variety of ways of learning; to better individualize for their interests and needs; and to use teaching strategies that make learning more efficient, successful, and enjoyable for all children. We aim to foster meaningful learning experiences by using multiple teaching tools and strategies and by building positive, supportive relationships with children, through environments that offer a variety of stimulating, hands-on materials and by developing classrooms and other learning spaces as learning centers that provide natural opportunities to move, be active and fully engaged in either solo or small group experiences.
  • Innovative Teaching Methods (learning beyond textbooks, learning beyond the classroom): I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understandWe feel very strongly that we need to take advantage of every opportunity to develop “real” understanding not simply looking for rote methods for marks-oriented education which offer nothing more than a mundane practice of abstract ideas. Learning should no longer restrict just to the classroom and students must venture outdoors to learn how to connect with their environment. Understanding can only be developed if there are regular opportunities to apply the skills in everyday situations, going outside and allowing learners to explore and find maths, science, history, languages, etc for themselves is the way to life-long learning. We have seen a lot of growth and boost in confidence in students which ultimately makes them life-long learners. Possibilities for learning beyond textbooks are endless and so are the benefits provided by them.  For learning outside the classroom and beyond textbooks, school ground in itself is a great place to start.  There is no end of places you can take the pupils - Museums, galleries, farms, bank, gram panchayat, rain harvesting plant, botanical garden; handicraft center, organizing workshops, meeting people, community walk, etc can be of great interest where they can find out how things are made and how things work at the local level. It enriches the learning experiences of children in many ways:

  • Makes learning relevant
  • Lets the abstract concepts come alive
  • Learning through dramatic play facilitates learning through the whole body.
  • Acquisition of Sense of discovery through experimentation
  • Develop interest in the environment and wider surroundings
  • children get exposed to new opportunities

The ability to apply skills is, according to a recent study, critical to employability yet absent in many school leavers. Providing situations where learners can apply their skills and problem-solving is essential if we are to develop young people who are able to “think”, “innovate” & “function” adequately in society.

 “The most important lessons in life are usually not learned in the classroom”.
  • Learning for life (EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING): Children must become life-long learners and learn for the examination of life rather than only cramming for marks. JMIS is the Best School in India for Experiential Learning. We motivate them to gain practical wisdom via EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING by connecting learning with the ‘REAL WORLD EXPERIENCES’ through a wide range of innovative teaching methods and activities like Discovery-Hour, Conceptual Activities, Experiments, Research N’ Referral (R & R) Programme, Demonstrations, Study-Projects, Audio-Visual teaching methods, School-Cinema, Theatre-in-Education, Newspaper-in-Education, Excursions, Camps, Workshops, Symposiums, Quiz Sessions, Training Programmes, Aptitude Tests, Olympiads, JMIS-Mentor Programme, Learning by doing and many more.
  • Competence/Excellence in GK, Current Affairs, Reasoning & Numerical Aptitude:  Preparation for the challenges of life outside school begins right from the JMIS-UPVAN(Kindergarten) in several interesting child-friendly ways of acquiring, analyzing, and applying knowledge gradually turning out to be robust. GK, Current Affairs and Aptitude programme including GK, Current-Affairs, Aptitude and Newspaper-in-Education slots in the Time-Table, the Morning Assembly Quiz, many Quiz contests across the year, Extempore, Excursions, several Olympiads, and the National Talent Search Examination (NTSE).
  • The Global Dimension in the curriculum: J M International School is the proud recipient of the ‘INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL AWARD’ thrice by BRITISH COUNCIL for outstanding development of the international dimension in the curriculum. JMIS has been recognized as one of the best schools in Delhi for the development of the international dimension in curriculum design. Whenever you make learning an exciting experience it leads to joyful learning. This learning experience is enriched with a judicious mix of cultural, religious & linguistic areas that are deemed to be vital for enabling our students globally competent.  The curriculum framed is enriching with creating activities & projects to foster international understanding with the help of video conferencing, exchange programs, interacting globally through mails, and special assemblies on US Day, Canada Day, Russia Day, etc. It was a window opening that brought in many visitors & friends from Australia & china under UNESCO Educational & Cultural Exchange. The bonds developed gave a better insight into human relations. We realize the potential to influence the opinion of global citizens of tomorrow. It is our responsibility to groom them into decision-makers with equal empathy for people from different parts of the world & work consistently towards our school motto “Timeless Indian Values, Global Outlook”.
  • Computer-aided learning (Techno-savvy): raising literacy standards of Information Technology from basic to advanced levels in computer proficiency”. We teach kids through technologies that help them get ahead with a two-pronged objective:
  1. To improve children’s basic learning levels using information technology (IT)
  2. Ensuring that children receive relevant and practical IT knowledge and skills

Each classroom at JMIS is a smart classroom with a smartboard, screen, overhead projector, magnifying spot camera device. Children learn and understand abstract concepts through audio-visual modules and short films, the entire system coordinated by the specialized learning center facilitated by a learning center resource person. It not only enhances the interest, understanding, learning, and application but also results in an overall improvement in the performance of all kinds of learners.

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"A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.~ Lao Tzu "