Q. Selecting integerated learning experiences?

It is important that we select appropriate experiences for children, more so those that are from the child's world and emerge from their interest. The teacher can develop, and plan for experiences to be made available for children using their interest as the starting point. A variety of activities are then provided, which children and the teacher discuss jointly. For example, the experiences could relate to arrival of migratory birds because some children noticed them, harvesting season, because the whole community is busy at that time and the children are necessarily going to be influenced by it. It may even be festivals that are celebrated in the community like "Id".

"Diwali", "Pateti", "Christmas" etc. or a recent calamity like the floods, or an earthquake, a theft in a nearby locality or even a road, train or airplane accident. An experience may then develop into a project. This project can develop from something that the children bring up. Let us look at what happened in one school. At the beginning of the term, in a sixth grade class, children had come to school with new shoes and new bags!

Each child had a different type of shoe although each of them had white ones, some of the children had Velcro to tie up the shoes, others had laces while still others did not have anything to tie the shoes, and they wore ‘slip on' shoes. Children were then fascinated with shoes and the variety. The teacher took notice of that fascination and developed an entire project on shoes, dealing with all the aspects of the curriculum.

(The project details could be simplified, detailed or complex, in order to suit the curriculum of any class from pre-school to the 10th grade or even higher, depending on the developmental level of the children.)