After School Centers
CR provides After School classes each day for approximately 500 students. We use a STEAM+ curriculum that includes science and technology, engineering, arts, math and language arts. We align instructional levels to students’ learning levels, focusing on basic literacy and numeracy skills, and emphasize critical thinking instead of memorization.
We teach our students that it not true that “some students just aren’t math students.” Everyone can learn math through hard work and proper teaching and encouragement. Toward this end, we help them to develop better number sense through the use of various group activities such as skip counting and number of the day. We also use “number talks” to encourage students to explain their numerical reasoning to help them build a solid mathematical foundation. Students engage in hands on projects such as measuring their classroom to learn to calculate area, or learning how to increase a recipe to better understand how math relates to their everyday lives. Math 24 is a favorite math game for many students.
Language-Tamil and English
Like our Literacy Project, our language program in both Tamil and English focus on using reading to build language skills. Access, choice, and talking about books all work to increase student’s reading volume. Students have progressed from reading no books for pleasure to reading over 40 books a year. Students are anxious to share their favorite books through informal book talks and recommendations. Teacher Read Alouds are always the favorite part of language classes.
CR is the largest provider of primary school computer education in the Villupuram Dt. and is the only program in the district to provide students with daily hands on computer access. Our curriculum includes keyboarding, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel, Movie Maker, Photoshop, and Lego Robotics. We have permanent computer rooms in several centers and service our other centers through our Scoot Tech program. Scoot Tech teachers travel by scooter to bring laptops to our more rural centers. We are a regular participant in the international Hour of Code program. Our centers with internet access learn coding online, and our offline students learn “unplugged” coding techniques that do not require computers.
Lego, Science and Engineering
For the past 4 years, CR has entered a team in the First Lego League Robotics competition. Over 200,000 students participate in this worldwide competition including about 200 Indian teams. For two out of the past three years, the CR team won First Place for its research projects on teaching coding without computers and on the challenge of getting clean drinking water to rural India villages. Last year, the team participated in the National Finals. We are one of only 3 government schools throughout India that participate in the competition. The team has been sponsored by the India Stem Foundation and Ford Motor Pvt. Ltd.