The students of Class VII of Vivekananda Kendra Vidyalaya participated in the Vivek Inspire Workshop which was held from 6th August to

11th August 2018 at VKV Balijan. This was the 3rd Batch and the selected students from Eight VKVs participated in that workshop. We reported at Balijan VKV in the afternoon and the three Resource persons from Jnana Prabodhini, Maharashtra briefed a little about the next day’s schedule. The Resource persons briefed about the purpose of the workshop and it’s different activities.

Vivek Inspire, whose aim is to nurture the talents of the meritorious students so that they can harness themselves developing their various skills and talents through different activities. So, theme of the Vivek Inspire Workshop was kept as ‘Observation’, so that they can make themselves as a keen observer.

The first session of the day was started with Prayer and Zero movement. Then the students were engaged for recitation of the Multiplication table (1 to 30), Squire table and Cube tables. Somewhere the students were found a little passive so the undersigned them with poems in a singing tune and tried to give the singing tune in table recitation.

Coding-decoding sessions were very interesting. All were found very attentive solving the problems. We, the Mentors also helped and guided the children. The Resource persons interacted with the students on tables.

To make the students active and draw their attention, songs – such as “Dal Chawal? Hum Nahi Khate. Kyun Nahi Khate? Namak Kam Hai….”, “Aao, Guna Guna Gao…………..” were introduced with actions. The children enjoyed a lot and they also sang together.

On the basis of the theme of the workshop, the Observation Session started with involving all the groups through various activities. The joyful activities like ‘Description of a theme, Draw and Guess’ and ‘Frame Game’ were very interesting and entertaining. Lots of curiosities were there and participated enthusiastically. Mentors also played the game with them.

Another striking feature of the Observation Session was ‘Observation of a patch’. All the groups prepared observation notes for presentation.

There were the Audio-Visual sessions of Maps. Students were assigned to think of the structure of the model village so that they can present it in an aerial view. All the mentors and students engrossed themselves drawing the aerial view of a model village.

Students in the Creative Session became very curious and imaginative where they were given two picture sheets for story or poem writing. They observed the various characters and their activities with a holistic view and wrote stories and poems. Resource persons appreciated their efforts.

In the presentation session, the students presented their observation reports of the patch that they observed, stories or poems and maps of the model village.

The Games Corner was also interesting and entertaining. Students played happily with Jenga and Mechano. Played with colours; designed flowers and butterflies with paper cuttings. They were seemed as a good observer when they experimented the slides through Folds copes.

The most entertaining games activities like ‘Relay Drawing’, Relay Drawing Game’, ‘Leader, Leader, Action Change’ , ‘Jack-Zoo’, ‘Boom Sack’, ‘Draw and Guess’ and ‘Doctor, Doctor, Help us’ were most fascinating.

In the Documentary and Movie sessions, the students happily enjoyed the programmes which were awe-inspiring videos. They were assigned the tasks for observations and making a brief report on it.

The Resource persons and mentors seated daily along with the Principal of the Host School to discuss the activities that implemented on the day. Each group offered the feedbacks and innovatives and also discussed about the activities of the next day.

The students, in the feedback session wrote the feedbacks of the workshop that they experienced throughout these five days in various sessions. Mentors also submitted the feedback sheets separately. A Mini Cultural Programme was kept to expose the hidden talents of the students. They presented songs, dance, jokes and Oral instrumental sounds.

Vivek Inspire, which is the most awe-inspiring one, attending for the first time; felt overwhelmed because it helps the students as well as the teachers to make good relationship between them. Really, it is an open platform for the teacher and taught involving them through various activities so that they can excel in their life smoothly in various fields.