Workshop for teachers at IISER Pune helps brush up skills

A special preparatory workshop for primary and secondary teachers was organised jointly by the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) and Marathi Vidnyan Parishad Mumbai on May 10, 2019 at the IISER, Pune campus.

In the one-day workshop, at least 85 teachers from the state participated. IISER’S Centre of Excellence in Science and Mathematics Education (COESME) conducted the workshop which included hands-on scientific projects in Science.

“This is a preparatory workshop for teachers who handle classes from 1 to 10.

“Teachers are trained to prepare their own research projects which they will submit later in the year at the fourth state-level Science and Math Teachers’ Congress competition. We have been organising this competition successfully for the last three years now,” said Ashok Rupner, programme manager at the Smt Indrani Balan Science Activity Centre under COESME at IISER, Pune.

The main theme of this year’s teachers’ Congress competition is ‘developing and evaluating capacity of original thinking among students.’

“In the workshop, experts conducted various sessions to make teaching fun for students. The sessions were on laboratory skills through experiments, Science education through cartoons, teaching methods for disabled students,” added Rupner.

COESME at IISER Pune was started in October 2015 and is a part of the Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya National Mission on Teachers and Teaching under the ambit of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India.

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Sandeep Krushna Jadhao a primary teacher of a Zilla Parishad school in Salvinde village from Raigad district was one of the winners of last year’s statelevel Science and Math Teachers’ Congress competition.

“When I was at IISER Pune campus, learning new techniques of teaching science was a real fun. I learnt all the techniques and projects from the training at IISER. After getting back to school, I decided to make a similar kind of fun Science project laboratory in our school, but there were many hurdles to it,” recalled Sandeep.

“Initially I studied all the science lessons from Classes 1 to 10 and then prepared more than 200 hands on experiment projects from scrap and raw materials which was easily available. I spent ₹15,000 to build the fun science laboratory in our school. It took us (me and my students) eight months time, and now finally all our school students learn Science subject with more enthusiasm .” he added.The students from the school have now started making their own models.