Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Dearest one! Wishing you a Merry Christmas and the Happiest New Year!! 

          God's blessings be ever with you as you embark on a New Year of hopes and dreams! May all your dreams come true!

                                      Loving wishes from all of us at Gurukulam      

             

Farewell to the Teaching Assistants!

09th Dec 2016

Gurukulam children and teachers bid a fond farewell to the Teaching Assistants from UK. 

Rebecca Neil, Christopher Roberts, Amy Meadows and Olivia Ball had stayed and worked at school the last 5 months as part of the Teaching Assistants programme organised by the British Council under the "Generation UK - India Programme". 

It has been 5 months of work and play together!!

Our loving thanks to KPMG for helping fund this programme.

Christopher taught Sania Mirza and Yogeshwaran of Class 6 guitar... and donated them the guitars too!

All the TAs in the traditional sarees!

With all our teachers!

Playtime with Rebecca!

Cyclone Vardah!

12th Dec 2016

Cyclone Vardah has left Chennai battered! Our school was no exception!

Doors and windows have been damaged. Class rooms flooded! Computers damaged...!

Fortunately all the teachers, staff and students are safe!

Grade 12 windows broken by the fallen tree!

Our water tank has been blown off to the next compound!

Visit to the Crocodile Bank

29th Nov 2016

Our children had a wonderful time at the Crocodile Bank. It was learning as much as it was fun!

Report by Mrs Santha, Teacher and Head of Discipline:

Today students of X, XI and XII grade had a visit to the Crocodile bank in Nemmilikuppam. We entered there at 9.30 am. 

Ms.Susan and Mrs. Santha accompanied. There were 41 students present(17 from X, 15 from XI and 9 from XII). 

Students were interested in seeing the Crocodiles, snakes, turtles and tortoises.There was a lively session by Mr.Arul. 

He handled the Indian python, tortoise and a crocodile. 

Ms. Anjana, Ms. Shobana explained about all the animals in detail. Students learnt that all these animals make the ecosystem balanced and much more. We came back to school at around 12.45 pm and the regular classes continued.

Pragadeesh, Nashni, Tamilselvi, Saira, Kaleel and Akshya gave a written feedback and report on the visit.

I attached some of the pictures taken.

Thank you.

Santha

Gurukulam.

Toast Master's workshop

26th Nov 2016

The Toast Master's 3rd workshop for this year went well! This is the second year that Toast Masters have had this programme in our school. The progress we see in the students are heart warming...

Mr Deepsaran, the chief coordinator of this programme from Toast Masters says:

We have started the 2^nd  session of Youth Leadership Program(YLP) to the students of Gurukulam school, Kovalam.

There are 20 students from 8^th  class and 15 students from 10^th  class and 4 teaching staff from the school, who are the part of this program. 

This is a 8 session program. We started on 12^th November 2016 and completed 3 sessions in November.

Due to the many holidays and exams in the month of December, we did not have sessions in December.

We have planned next 5 sessions in January and February.

This program is fully sponsored from Servion CSR budget.

I had extended support and encouragement from Nitin, thank you very much sir.

The details of first 3 sessions were

Session 1: Ice breaker

·         We introduce what is toastmasters to students.

·         It also includes on what is the importance of communication, making every student speak about themselves for 2 minutes(to compare their confidence and communication after the end of the session).

Toastmaster who help us: Jayan Narayanan

·         He is in toastmaster for about 13+ years.

·         He has achieved the highest award in toastmaster – Distinguished Toastmaster(DTM).

·         He is the founder and Managing partner @ “TOSS the COIN” marketing company.

Session 2 : Organize your speech

·         It is based on how we need to organize your speech, how we need to start and end a speech.

·         10 students will prepare a speech and present before everyone for 5 minutes.

·          Based on their speech, a friendly evaluation will be given to the students.

Toastmaster who help us: Manikandan Balasubramaniyam

·         He has been in toastmaster for about 4+ years.

·         He serves as the Area Director and takes care of 5 different clubs across different organizations.

·         He currently works for TCS and is Six Sigma Master Black Belt certified

Session 3: Get to the point

·         It is based on different styles we can follow to  deliver the right information we are planning to say.

·         10 students will prepare a speech and present before everyone for 5 minutes. Also, others will be taking different roles in toastmasters.

·          Based on their speech, a friendly evaluation will be given to the students.

Toastmaster who help us: Sastharam Ravindran

·         He has been in toastmaster for about 10+ years.

·         He has achieved the highest award in toastmaster – Distinguished Toastmaster(DTM).

·         He had served as the leader for all the Toastmaster clubs  in Tamilnadu and Srilanka for 2015 - 2016

·         He is the Director of Marketing and Operations  @ Sarash Worldwide Exports Pvt. Ltd.

Next sessions will be based on how to improve your impromptu skills, body language, gestures, how to be an MC for an event, basics of presentation, etc.

Will keep you updated on the future sessions.

Thanks and Regards,

Deepsaran S 

Report by Mr Abdul, teacher and coordinator:

In todays toast masters session, the following were presented:

how to deliver a speech in front of others in public.

How to choose a topic for a good speech... for example the topic we like, we know and the audience will know.

What are the differences between good communication and effective communication. (The presentation was done using a video presentation)

How to use correct tenses during a speech.

Two groups of 4 students each presented a  speech with their own topics.

They then evaluated the students speech, and gave their ideas to improve the speech.

KFFL with KPMG on Spoken English

KPMG family for Literacy (KFFL) volunteers are conducting a series of workshops for our students on Spoken English!

Every month, for the last 4 months, volunteers from KFFL have been conducting workshops for our children empowering them with better spoken english. 

The volunteers will be continuing their work with our children through out the year!

Our loving thanks to the volunteers on the time spent in empowering our children.

Awareness of snakes - by volunteers from Crocodile Park

22nd Nov 2016

Volunteers from the Crocodile Park brought in awareness to our children on snakes.

Report by Mrs Santha, teacher and Head of Discipline:

Date : 22.11.16                                    Time : 10 am to 12 pm

Venue : Educom

Audience : X, XI, XII students

Teachers present : Mrs. Santha, Ms.Susan, Ms. Olivia

• Today there was a power point presentation by Mr. Arul, Ms. Shobana and Ms. Zai Whittaker from crocodile park.
• A brief introduction on reptiles especially snakes was given.
• Also " How to identify the venomous and non-venomous snakes by their  physical appearance" was presented.
• Then " What should we do if a snake bites? Do's and Dont's"  was explained to the students with a video.
• The entire session was useful in a way to make awareness among students if they see snakes anywhere or if someone gets snake bite.
• It was an interactive session.

Toast Master's workshop

12th and 19th Nov 2016

Toast Master's conducted workshops on public speaking for this year again!

The students of last year had benefitted tremendously from this workshop.

We thank all the volunteers from "Toast Masters".

Report by Mrs Shubha, teacher and coordinator:

Report on Toast master: 12/11/16

First Day of Youth Leadership program.

·      The session started with introduction of students and the volunteers.

·      There was a guest speaker of the day Mr. Jairaman he introduced himself and then he started to tell about his life history how he improved in his career and the importance of

Communication and he also advised the students

·       Then there was session by the volunteer Mr. Karthikeyan  about how to be firm, body language, voice modulation  and to develop confidence within them  so that they may be confident in the speech.

·      Then the schedule for the upcoming week was discussed and then there was a sorting of roles to the students such as (grammarian, timer, Toast master of the day, Ah counter) and there was a selection of students for the first round speaking which will be for the second session.

Day: 2                                                                                                             Date: 19/11/16

·      The program started at 9.30 am with the guest speaker.

·      Today the guest speaker was Mr.Mani.

·      After the speech the students were parted into team A, B

·      Then there was a session by Mr. Mani who shared about how to prepare for a speech what are the important points to keep in mind while preparing and presenting a speech.

·      Then students were sorted and sent to two different rooms and the speakers were evaluated and the role players of the day discussed the results and the students were asked correct their mistake.

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·      Then the next of speakers were selected.