Shepard's Hill

Students were extremely excited to have Nikhil Gulathi, the author of Shepard's Hill in their Grade 3 classroom. They had read his book during finding out more about the story of the Golconda fort.

The question answer session was never ending!!! :)

Few snapshots from our trip

Reading about the history of the rulers of Hyderabad

Foot wear worn by the Nizams 

Traditional attire worn by the Nizams

Hyderabad Darshan

After the heavy rains that lashed Hyderabad yesterday, I wasn't very sure if we could go on our much awaited field trip today. We were lucky!! The rain god had listened to the prayers of my Grade 3 students. They were excited beyond words for this trip.

So... Here we were, all set for our Hyderabad Darshan ! The first place we visited was the Chowmahalla Palace. It was breathtakingly beautiful !! Students spent a lot of time exploring the incredible palace of the Nizam era. The kids were full of curiosity about the palace. What followed were a long list of questions and we discussed a lot about the history of the place. In the morning before we left the school, students wrote down questions which they had in mind related to the trip (some things that they wanted to know more about). They were expected to explore and find their answers. This way they 'tried' to be focused ;p

We walked and we walked....  

Chowmahalla is truly a mahal in the literal sense. By the time we finished exploring one building, we had already exhausted our energy and the very thought of walking to Charminar got us even more tired. Finally we found our way out of the Palace and our journey to Charminar had begun by foot :p

Things we were worried about :

• 21 kids walking on the road
• Few naughty ones (actually a big bunch of naughty ones)
• Only four adults ( I wish we were 21 adults :D which was never going to happen)
• Narrow roads of old city
• Heat
• Crazy autos

This list seems to be endless.

However, we reached Charminar and found a guide who agreed to show us the place, basically the history of the gigantic and exquisite structure. 

The most proud moment for me as teacher was to know that my students knew much more about the Charminar than the guide himself ! The guide was amazed at what they knew and nicknamed them 'genius students'.

Nizam's museum was next on our list of places to visit. After having our lunch and resting for a while we waited eagerly for our next pit stop. However, we were not able to see the museum as there was no electricity and the entire place was dark. Too bad they didn't have power backup! To add to this disappointed, it started to pour cats and dogs. We waited for a while for the rain to subside, but we had to get back to school before 3pm. Fortunately, autos came to our rescue and dropped us all, batch by batch to our bus which was waiting for us outside the galli (lane).

Phew!!! To sum it all, it was one amazing field trip which I will always remember.

Another Fun Week

Last week was a busy one for Grade 3

In English, we continued with persuasive writing. With the help of a graphic organizer the students learnt to organise their persuasive thoughts. They were introduced to different sentence starters to make their persuasive writing more meaningful.

Students worked on different number centers for Math lessons. The main objective for designing these centers was to help the students connect to real life problems.

  

Field Trips are hectic but they are fun !! Students enjoyed their trip to the Golconda Fort. It was relevant and students were able to make clear connection to what they had researched in the classroom during the same week.

With the help of the world map, students located various places which are famous for their monuments. Students also read different folklores, facts and anecdotes from the book called 'Heritage of Hyderabad' by Madhu Vottery. They shared the information with their peers.

In the Library lesson, students learned to identify fiction and non-fiction books, and explored the differences and similarities between them.

Trail into Grade 3

Hello ! Welcome to the Aga Khan Academy!

The year has begun and my Grade 3 classroom is almost set.Thanks to Ms. Laila who has been a great help and a support. 'Meet the Teacher day' went on well. I was extremely happy to meet the parents of my students. See my happy face :D and I hope this year is a very very fruitful year for all of us.