…and why it matters. Hello all. Welcome to the 162nd edition of TEPS Weekly ! There is an NEP 2020. Then there is the NCF-TE,  the NCF-FS, the NCF-SE... So many policy documents related to education have been released over the last 5-6 years! One of them is the National Professional Standards for Teachers (NPST), which articulates the professional standards expected from any teacher within the school education system. It further breaks down the role of teaching into certain c

…in daily practice. Hello all. Welcome to the 161st edition of TEPS Weekly ! What is your school culture? How do you recognise what it is?  To help you think about these questions, here are a few more questions: What does your school stand for? What do your school rules focus on? What are your students encouraged or discouraged from doing? What are the things they are praised or scolded for – discipline? exploration? test scores? Your answers to these questions will give you

…from a young age. Hello all. Welcome to the 160th edition of TEPS Weekly ! Aadya and Aarav are in Grade 2. They are best friends because they live in the same colony, play together every evening, come to school by the same bus and even get similar marks in every class test and exam.  Every day, their class has 20 minutes of independent reading time, right after their snack break. When the teacher says, “You may choose a book,” Aadya walks straight to the class library shelf,

...impact student achievement. Hello all. Welcome to the 159th edition of TEPS Weekly ! Research tells us that teachers should have high expectations of their students. When teachers believe in their students’ abilities, it positively influences academic and non-academic growth. But what do “high expectations” mean in a real classroom? Students are different in their abilities, pace of learning and confidence levels. So, is it logical for a teacher to have the same high expec

…the WHOLE class in discussions. Hello all. Welcome to the 158th edition of TEPS Weekly !   Imagine a Grade 8 Science class. The teacher writes some experimental results on the board and asks, “What do these results tell us?” A few students quickly raise their hands and share their answers. The teacher listens to them and then concludes the discussion. At first glance, this may look like a successful discussion. But was it really effective? Not quite. Classroom discussions ar

...informed teaching. Hello all. Welcome to the 157th edition of TEPS Weekly ! When teachers hear the word data, they often think first of test scores, grades and report cards. That is understandable. These are the most visible forms of evidence in schools. They are concrete, easy to record, and often the first thing that school systems ask for. Then there are some who think of the role of data in their teaching, and these teachers/educators also think of data from formative

...to support teachers. Hello all. Welcome to the 156th edition of TEPS Weekly ! A recent workshop we attended focused on school-and-parent relationship building. The workshop brought together a diverse group, including counselling and educational psychology interns, PhD scholars, educators and EdTech founders. We were sharing why teaching needs to be treated more like a profession. This was to help teachers build self-worth and not feel like they are constantly doing their j

…the what and the why. Hello all. Welcome to the 155th edition of TEPS Weekly ! A Professional Learning Community (PLC), as the name suggests, is often imagined as a group of professionals coming together to learn and achieve a shared goal. For example, a group of nurses working together to make patient care safer, or a group of software engineers working together to make a publicly-available open-source app work more smoothly. But, what makes a PLC different from regular wee

…the how and the why. Hello all. Welcome to the 154th edition of TEPS Weekly ! It is the weekly teachers' meeting at Buds International School. The agenda for the day is ‘Reflective Practice – What is it and how do we do it?’ The academic coordinator begins with a simple question: “How many of you reflected on your teaching this week?” Teachers respond:“I always think about my classes on my way home.”"If a lesson has not gone well, I think of that lesson in detail." “I don’t

…to build reading comprehension. Hello all. Welcome to the 153rd edition of TEPS Weekly ! Below are two short excerpts describing the same incident. As you read them, don’t think about which one is “better written.” Instead, notice how each text asks the reader to make meaning. What does the text explain for the reader, and what does it leave the reader to infer? Where do you find yourself actively imagining, noticing or thinking? Text A One day, as Meera was walking back fro

…by school students? Hello all. Welcome to the 152nd edition of TEPS Weekly ! During one of our interactions with teachers, one teacher said something that really stayed with us: “You can’t have scientific and research skills in school. That’s for college.” Most of us will disagree. But we don’t think the teacher who said this was being ignorant or stubborn. We think they were being honest about their understanding and model of research in their head. When many of us hear “re

...to learn. Hello all. Welcome to the 151st edition of TEPS Weekly ! Every teacher has likely faced a classroom where, despite their best efforts, the atmosphere feels dull. The teacher finds blank faces, and students hardly raise their hands. The only hands raised are from students asking what exactly they need to memorise for the upcoming exam. There seems to be no thrill of discovery or building of deep conceptual understanding. When this happens, it is natural for a teac

…for schools. Hello all. Welcome to the 150th edition of TEPS Weekly ! This is the 150th edition of TEPS Weekly! We have been sending out this newsletter to educators not only across India but also across South Asia, South-East Asia, the Southwest Asia or Arabian Gulf, and even some African countries! One of the most common questions we are asked is, “How do you write so consistently? How have you never missed or even delayed a single edition?” The simple answer is that we lo

…for early years students. Hello all. Welcome to the 149th edition of TEPS Weekly ! Read the following sentence: Teblin drepped mav nosset boxen, ro plimful rivet nifter glen. Did you pronounce all the words correctly? Most probably, yes. That is reading fluency. Did you understand what you read? Most probably, no. That is a lack of reading comprehension . And this is exactly what we see in many kindergarten classrooms (and even primary classrooms) across the country – childr

…in Teacher Professional Development. Hello all. Welcome to the 148th edition of TEPS Weekly ! We have been working with teachers for more than 5 years as an organisation, and we have members who have been working with teachers for more than 15 years. Over the last 5 years, we have observed multiple patterns with schools getting their teacher professional development (TPD) right or wrong. We had earlier written about why TPD fails  or how TPD is effective when it is continuou

…to build understanding. Hello all. Welcome to the 147th edition of TEPS Weekly ! Ms. Roy has 58 students in her Grade 6 classroom. She has just completed teaching a Civics chapter on ‘Local Self-Government’ using the Direct Instruction approach. Before moving onto written exercises, she asks, “In one sentence, who can tell me what a Gram Panchayat is?” She cold calls Aman, who reluctantly answers, “It is the police station in the village that makes rules and punishes people.

...of Things Education. Hello all. Welcome to the 146th edition of TEPS Weekly ! Things Education is now 5 years old. YES! We have passed a huge milestone for a bootstrapped startup! We have reached your inboxes every Friday with ‘something useful’ from various branches of school education for another year. The newsletter in its 4th year now, focused on Classroom Management, Pedagogical Content Knowledge, Assessments, Foundation Learning and Teacher Wellness. We also wrote ab

…the what and the how. Hello all. Welcome to the 145th edition of TEPS Weekly ! Ms. Shubhangi is a Grade 5 English teacher in a government school in Pune. The topic for the day is active and passive voice. Ms. Shubhangi writes two sentences on the board: The boy kicked the ball. The ball was kicked by the boy. She underlines ‘kicked’, circles ‘boy’ and ‘ball’, and starts explaining what changes. She says unfamiliar words as she teaches: subject, object, verb, past participle.

…in the early years. Hello all. Welcome to the 144th edition of TEPS Weekly ! It’s 9:30 am in a Balvatika classroom. Children sit in neat rows. The first half of the day is called ‘whole-child time’: 20 minutes of reading aloud after the teacher, then 10 minutes of exercise in the corridor, then a video on shapes, and finally a worksheet. The day has a little bit of everything, so it feels  like whole-child development, like the NEP 2020 and NCF-FS have emphasised on. Yet, al

…for shaping self-discipline. Hello all. Welcome to the 143rd edition of TEPS Weekly ! In one of the previous editions  of our newsletter, we discussed an interventionist or reactive approach to managing student behaviour. This approach is about having clear consequences (reinforcement and punishment). However, even if punishments are appropriate and given with a positive attitude, this approach may not work for building character.  Character-building means good behaviour nee