"Educator Development Program"

The Gajera Trust had organized a 10 days webinar of ‘Maa Foundation ‘with ten different topics for the Pre-Primary educator of all branches of Gajera School. In which the principals, vice-principals as well as educators of all the branches were trained through this creative and knowledgeable webinar.

Day-1 - Topic: Teacher vs. Facilitation

SPEAKER: Ms. Neha Desai, Project coordinator associated with Maa foundation.

Educators are the ones with knowledge and expertise in a particular field. They impart that knowledge through a variety of means to their students. Facilitators build on the knowledge base of the group of students to find the answers to questions.

The teacher role: -The teacher's main role is as a facilitator – there to offer support and advice when needed, and to provide the necessary scaffolding and teaching of skills when necessary.

The Facilitators role: - The definition of facilitate is "to make easy" or "ease a process." What a facilitator does is plan, guide and manage a group event to ensure that the group's objectives are met effectively, with clear thinking, good participation and full buy-in from everyone who is involved.

Day-2 - Topic: Child Development theories.

Child development theories focus on explaining how children change and grow over the course of childhood. Such theories center on various aspects of development including social, emotional, and cognitive growth.

Day-3- Topic- Developmental Milestones/ Child Development and learning cycle.

Speaker: Neha Desai

The Learning Cycle is the process through which students acquire the knowledge base. The Cycle guides learning on different levels, starting with an awareness of information and continuing until students can utilize new information in their own teaching experiences. The five steps of the planning cycle are: Observe – the process of gathering information. Analyze – questioning what learning and development is taking place to make meaning of what has been observed. Plan – planning the next steps to continue supporting learning and development.

mixed activities and impulsive planning on virtual platform which the made the session very

interactive and lively.

Day-4- Topic- Communication Skills

Speaker: Ms. Kavita Kour

Communication skills involve listening, speaking, observing and empathizing. It is also helpful to understand the differences in how to communicate through face-to-face interactions, phone conversations and digital communications, like email and social media. Written communication is very important for educators as they are more involved in writing reports, bulletins, mail, manuals and proposal in the form of circular, notes, etc. “EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION” which should be simple, clear, time bound, group oriented and the selection of language, strong content, proper pitch and body gestures use of correct teaching aids.

Day 5: Topic: Children with special needs

Speaker: Mr. Nayan Choudhary

Session starts with small movie ‘Tare Zameen par’ to understand and find out learning disabilities of the child and how to handle the learner, parent and teacher as a whole for the management of the disability.

Different learning disabilities like Speech and motor difficulties, Learning Disability, Autism Spectrum Disorder and ADHD were taken up in the session.

Day-6 Topic: Lesson planning

Speaker: Ms. Neha Desai,

The lesson plan is an important tool to help in preparing for children's care and learning. Lesson plans encourage us to think about order, intention of our approaches, and time with children. They are a great way to stay organized, connect ideas, and make our ideas visible for others to see.

She explained the meaning of curriculum, benefits of Lesson Plan, Innovative activities related to the content, Time table planning.

Day - 7 - Topic- Resources, Strategies and Designing Classroom Space

Speaker: Ms. Manali Patel

A teaching resource can take many different forms and will mean slightly different things to every teacher, parent and child. But the basic definition is simple: A teaching resource is a material that is designed to help facilitate learning and knowledge acquisition.

STORIES and TOYS a part of resources and strategies hold a vital importance in molding and

developing the early learners holistically.

Day - 8 - Topic - ASSESSMENT

Speaker: Ms. Khyati Bhavsar

Assessment is the systematic basis for making inferences about the learning and development of students. It is the process of defining, selecting, designing, collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and using information to increase students' learning and development.

The purpose of assessment is to gather relevant information about student performance or progress, or to determine student interests to make judgments about their learning process.

Day-9 Topic- Children with Special Needs

Speaker: Neha Desai

Our 9th day of training was on Scope and Sequence. She gave us some tips about our learning method. In which we have to integrate our lessons with nature, games, activities, life skill, sensory education etc. Through one activity children can learn many more things. like counting, recognition, speaking, listening etc. So, Utilization of minimum time in maximum way.

Day-10 Topic-Pawer of Play

Speaker: Kavita Kour

Our 10th day of training was about Power of play. She told us how to make more interesting the method of learning and the best method is play-way method. Here a choice should be given to the learners so that they give their 100% in their work and educators get qualitative results. Through this method children develop their creativity, social skill of sharing, turn taking, focus on particular activity. Day by day the curiosity of learners increases to learn new things.

The last day of the webinar ended with a speech given by Mr. Amit Mehta, CEO of

MAA foundation whose words were inspiring and gave strong mantra of the day.

“CHALLENGE IS TO CHANGE OURSELVES”. All the speakers, Ms. Neha Desai, Ms. Khyati Bahvsar, Ms. Kavita Kor, Mr. Nayan Chudhary made the session very interactive and the content was

very concrete and informative. The webinar was ended with expression of gratitude from all the respected Principals, Vice Principals and the

educators along with their leanings.