News Desk: Union Minister of Human Resource Development Ramesh Pokhriyal released an Alternative Academic Calendar at the upper primary stage virtually today. NCERT under the guidance of the MHRD developed the calendar for students, parents, and teachers at primary and upper primary stages.
The Minister highlighted that this calendar will cater to the need of all children including Divyang children (Children with Special Need) – link for audiobooks, radio programmes, and video programme will be included.
Pokhriyal informed that the calendar contains week-wise plans consisting of interesting and challenging activities, with reference to theme/chapter taken from syllabus or textbook. Most importantly, it maps the themes with the learning outcomes. The learning outcomes can be achieved through any resource including the textbooks children are using in their state or UT.
It also covers experiential learning activities such as Arts Education, Physical Exercises, yoga, pre-vocational skills, etc. This Calendar contains class-wise and subject-wise activities in tabular forms. This Calendar includes activities related to four languages as subject areas, i.e., Hindi English, Urdu, and Sanskrit. This calendar also gives space to the strategies of reducing stress and anxiety among teachers, students, and parents. The calendar includes link for Chapter wise e-content available on the e-pathshala, NROER, and DIKSHA portals of GOI.
All the given activities are suggestive in nature, not prescriptive, nor is the sequence mandatory. Teachers and parents may opt to contextualize the activities and do those activities that the student shows interest in, irrespective of the sequence.
NCERT has already started having live interactive sessions with students, parents, and teachers through the TV channels In addition to interacting with the viewers, hands-on activities along with the teaching of topics are demonstrated in these live sessions. This calendar would also be disseminated by conducting video conferencing with SCERTs/SIEs, Directorates of Education, Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan, Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, CBSE, State School Education Boards, etc.
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