How Collaborative Learning Ignited a Passion for Geography in Young Minds.
There is a lot of chatter as the session begins at the Young Readers' Club. Someone suggests an interesting yet challenging game in geography. At first, the others don't show much interest. The reader who suggested does not give up and goes on to show how the game is played. Another geography fan joins in and together they compete to get the answer right. They look at the country shape, identify the country and then go on to exploring more information such as the neighbouring countries, which continent, the currency and so on. There is silence. The game is over and we move on to what is scheduled for the day.
Fast forward by a few weeks. The readers who are geography fans have been demonstrating their prowess in geography which is a delight to sit and watch. After all no one is testing either of us. On one particular day, these two readers haven't been able to attend. But we have got used to this game. We decide to give it a try by ourselves. We are no experts in geography. However, we do not want to give up either. One of the readers gets her globe and announces that she can help. She has the globe. She tells which continent it is. We begin guessing. After several tries, we zero in on the answer. It is China. What's the capital of China, she asks? Somehow China is a familiar country and almost everyone knows the capital is Beijing. Another reader asks what is the population of this country? Remember it is no longer the most populous country. India surpassed it. We look through 4 options and make a random guess which turns out to be right. We scream for joy! We did it!
Discovery of new countries about which we have not heard of at all.
Heard of countries like Burkina Faso or Kiribati or Liechtenstein? As we played we located Burkina Faso West Africa. Kiribati is a small country in central Pacific ocean. As for Liechtenstein it is one of the smallest countries in Europe. When we think of Europe, we think of the U.K, France, Germany, Italy, Spain etc. The fact that there is a small, relatively unknown country there came as a surprise. What's more we found it incredibly difficult to pronounce the name of this country. But it was worth the fun. We giggled as we tried to pronounce it correctly.
We may not know a lot about these countries. That is left open for anyone who is curious to know more. But we know that these countries exist and where. We simply know it. No objective per se. Just for fun. We discovered it as a group and it has a nice memory attached and that's what counts. Little did we imagine that exploring geography would help build a healthy camaraderie at the Young Readers' Club!
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Both weekday and weekend batches are available at the Young Readers' Club. While this program is for the 8-12 age group, the Young Writers' Club program for the 13-15 age group offers a weekly platform to read and discuss curated articles from the news, observe writing approaches and practise one's writing skills. Musings from the Young Writers' Club is an online magazine showcasing the work we do at the Young Writers' Club.
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