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Gayathri Thakoor, Mulund
Hey, I saw Venus and she was a bright semicircle throwing out rays of light!” exclaimed Shivani Maru, a thrilled standard six student of SMPR English Medium High School. As she described her first telescopic experience to
Mulund Plus, her excited classmates spoke about their experience as well, sitting on the terrace of their school building in Mulund west.
That was at 7.30 pm, when Venus was just about to set and the 200 odd students were now waiting to see the craters of the moon and Mars which had settled right on the top of the sky. Would their teachers allow them to wait till 10.30 pm to see Saturn rise in the sky, they wondered!
This and more, was the first practical exposure that the CBSE school gave its students for a better understanding of astronomy and geology. Conducted by Nav Nirmitee, a Powai-based institution that designs and develops educational toys, the evening sessions from December 13 to 16 ran ‘house-full shows’ for the students between 6 pm to 9 pm. Talking to them through a power point presentation was Prof Anand Ghaisas from the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education.
“When I started off by telling them that we are going to talk about the solar system, they were not so enthusiastic. But to their surprise, after an hour and a half, we have still not moved beyond the moon,” Prof Ghaisas observes, happily. The questions that the students are asking are all typical. “They want to know about UFOs, life on other planets and everything which is not in their textbooks and I am really happy to see this response,” he said.
For questions on gravity and phases of the moon, Prof Ghaisas showed the students how a small game of tug-of-war can help them solve their doubts. And with examples of distances between railway stations such as Mulund, Dombivili and Ghatkopar, he explained why the moon looked so big as compared to the other stars from the earth. In other words, the students were enthralled by this teacher who told them so much under the star-lit sky with telescopes for company.
Geeta Ladi, who is the co-ordinator from Nav Nirmitee, says, “When children do and discover such concepts, they understand them and remember them better.”
Very few schools are aware of the fact that there are such institutions which go about making such presentations. Ladi along with her team is making her rounds to each school with the programme and in return leaves a brand new telescope in the school as a gift to the students. “Our effort is to develop a liking to the subject and then eventually direct them towards it, which explains the idea of gifting the telescope to each school,” she says.
Beaming and watching the proceedings is Laxmi Subramoniam, the school principal. She knows that hers is the first school that has given this opportunity to the third and fourth standard students as well. “I also get to know if my teachers have done well in relating the basic concepts to my students,” she says.
Having organised a separate session for all the school teachers, she hopes that the session will give her staff enough training to include these programmes as the school’s syllabus.
A full moon and stars in the sky and no books; what more can the students ask for? It has also been snacking time for them as the abstract stories of the universe are unfolded.
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