The class 8th students of Puvidham are now building real arches in their hostel building. I did not know it was so goddamn difficult to build a wall straight. We had to bring down the walls 3 times before we got it right. It is really a lot of skilled work. In any case there was slow progress (5 days) and we now are at the stage of building arches. Thrilling, I must say. But wait till we remove the scaffolding! The process
- Build side walls
- Use bricks as scaffolding
- Use string with radius length like a compass and create scaffolding with mud
- Arrange bricks on top of this platform with mud filling the gaps
- Those who have faith pray and others like me just worry and wait....
Murthy admiring his handiwork....
Ravi and Mani finish their first arch... you can see the scaffolding for the second one next to Ravi..
1 comment:
hey Ram!(Reminds me of Gandhi's assasination everytime i call u!!!)
Lovely to see all the activities happening in Puvidham which are so contextual to these children. it requires immense skill and hard work.. so hats off to all...
Some querries:
1) when the process of building the arch started how much of the initial plan accomodated the children's strategies? i have read the earlier post but it wasnt clear to me as to were the children able to logically build the ideas to construct the arch? (did all of them know how to build that becuase of their earlier exposure to construction work?)were they going by trial and error or some strategies?
2)at the risk of souding a conventional teacher i still want to ask that once these kids completed building the arch was there some kind of follow up done? did they write about it? if they didnt want to write so much did you try activities like word chain or concept maps or any other represtation? Language skills would be very important in abstraction since these kids are going to the mainstream next year... and its not about mundane writing but congnitve skills they would be employing in these looking back kind of activites....
Sarita
Post a Comment