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Varsha Seshan

Writing Workshops at Gurukul School

February 15, 2017 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

The British Library invited me to conduct writing workshops for the fourth and fifth standard students of Gurukul School, and what fun it was! A student of mine introduced me to a lovely activity that I improvised for the fourth standard. I handed out sheets of paper to groups of children, and asked them to write […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: British Library, creative writing, Gurukul, school

Reading Day

October 16, 2015 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

Helen O’ Grady’s Navi Mumbai chapter invited me to be part of its Reading Day celebrations in honour of Dr Kalam’s birthday. What a crazy day I had with enthusiastic children from St. Mary’s School, Koparkhairane, and Gold Crest High, Vashi! The children were full of questions. One commented, “Most authors now don’t really write; they type. […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: reading, school

Alma Mater

August 8, 2015 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

Thoughts come to me in bits and pieces. The house charts  are still displayed at the back of the hall. They’ve become bigger and grander, not restricted to single sheets of chart-paper. Also, the availability of print-outs means that girls with neat handwriting don’t make all the charts. There are big boards on the wall, […]

Filed Under: Children, Workshops, Writing Tagged With: school, St. Mary's

St. Mary’s … St. Mary’s …

July 17, 2015 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

When I read the title (and when I was writing it), I could not help singing it. I’ve been writing for ages now. I’ve had about 25 stories for children published. I have a book to my credit. Yet, I can’t deny that I am happy to see an article in the St. Mary’s School magazine! […]

Filed Under: Children, Writing Tagged With: school

Drama

April 13, 2015 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

Children love to act. All of us love to act, or Dumb Charades would not be such a popular game. One thing I stress during all my workshops is the importance of copyright. I insist that children don’t just rip images and articles off the internet, print them and use them. In keeping with that idea, I […]

Filed Under: Children, Workshops Tagged With: baramati, language, literature, reading, school, workshop

Little Red Riding Hood

April 10, 2015 by Varsha Seshan 4 Comments

In the first session of a workshop, particularly one with a heavy name like “Language and Literature Workshop”, I like to start on a light note. Humour is a great place to begin, and I turn to an all-time favourite – Roald Dahl. This time, I chose five of my favourite poems – “The Crocodile”, “The Porcupine”, […]

Filed Under: Children, Workshops Tagged With: language, literature, Little Red Riding Hood, reading, Roald Dahl, school, workshop

Language and Literature Workshops in Schools

April 9, 2015 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

Moving on from reading workshops in libraries to Language and Literature Workshops in schools is a lovely step! Working with 250 children was a whole new experience for me …  

Filed Under: Children, Workshops Tagged With: baramati, language, literature, reading, school, VPEMS, workshop

Back from Baramati

December 17, 2014 by Varsha Seshan 2 Comments

My lovely workshop at Baramati has come to an end. One child made a card – out of a recycled wedding card. Another child naively told me, “This is Harsh’s gift from class V A.” Children shared what they had learnt. And one girl gave me a letter. Here’s just a little part of a […]

Filed Under: Children, Workshops Tagged With: reading, school, workshop

Goodbye Gurukul

April 30, 2014 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

I had decided what I would write about today, but was moved to tears more than once by everything students and colleagues from Vishwashanti Gurukul said to me, wrote to me and gave me. One student said, “I used to hate Shakespeare, but you made me fall in love with Macbeth.” Another confessed, “I have […]

Filed Under: Children, People Tagged With: school

Theory of Knowledge – Mathematics

April 10, 2014 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

Planning my Theory of Knowledge class on Mathematics as an Area of Knowledge, I realise again what a strange mixture of art and maths I am! How I enjoy mathematics! Yet, I realise how much can be challenged. Is mathematics associated with beauty? What is the focus of mathematics – reliability, validity, certainty or truth? […]

Filed Under: Random Tagged With: school, theory of knowledge

Girlie

March 15, 2014 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

When I was five years old, I moved from Vashi to Pune. There, I came across a strange word – ‘girlie’. If you didn’t know a girl’s name (yes, I went to a girls’ school), you would say, “Excuse me, girlie, what is your name?” The word felt awkward in my mouth. Girlie.What would I […]

Filed Under: Children Tagged With: school

No School

December 19, 2013 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

Winter is here! Cold face, cold hands, cold feet… Ah! It’s lovely! The first morning that fog descended on our school was almost surreal. It was not Pune; it could not be Pune! Cold face and all the rest, sure, I knew all that. But that kind of fog? It was as if we were […]

Filed Under: People Tagged With: school

Examinations again

December 10, 2013 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

It’s time for some more of those gems – … he just wants to say that they are too nervous to make good but is describing by writing so many words for it. The poem has very shocking connotative and also short story plot used. The priest was just chilling out. (Commentary on The Eve […]

Filed Under: Language Tagged With: school

The Joy Luck Club

December 4, 2013 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club fits so perfectly under the heading ‘unusual’. It’s unusual in every way. The language is unusual. The structure is unusual. The name is unusual. I love the idea of stories of motherhood, and I love stories that do not have a simplistic conclusion. Each story in this collection is […]

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: review, school

Expectations

November 18, 2013 by Varsha Seshan 4 Comments

Theory of Knowledge challenges the way we know, and I wanted to show how we see what we expect to see. Of course, these are old, old ideas, but they were fun anyway! I showed my class this picture: “What does it say?” I asked. “Paris in the spring!” “Are you sure?” I asked several […]

Filed Under: Random Tagged With: school, theory of knowledge

Perspective

October 29, 2013 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

In the little primary school in Perani where we worked, money is of course a problem. Going there with students from an international school put things into stark contrast. The base of the four walls of the classroom is painted black. The black area is about three and a half feet high. One of the […]

Filed Under: Children, Travel Tagged With: school

Painting Gates

October 28, 2013 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

Children are morbid. There’s no other word for it sometimes. A little boy, Tamilbaradhi, was watching a student of mine painting a gate. “Don’t touch the gate,” I warned him. He nodded, knowingly, but seemed to expect me to say more. “The beautiful, freshly painted gate will get spoilt,” I clarified. Tamilbaradi frowned. That was […]

Filed Under: Children Tagged With: school

Half an Egg

October 27, 2013 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

Last week, I was at Pondicherry with 56 students and 4 colleagues. We volunteered to work for Habitat for Humanity, building a road, painting houses and painting gates, among other things. It was an experience of a lifetime. Working with my students at a primary school, we witnessed the mid-day meal. The midday meal proudly […]

Filed Under: Children Tagged With: school

After the Story Games

October 16, 2013 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

With the One-Word-Story-Game and the One-Phrase-Story-Game, my purpose was to point out how powerless we feel when we can’t control language. I spoke about different aspects of language as power and why we feel more in control when we have a whole phrase to ourselves, rather than a single word. Then, I moved to the […]

Filed Under: Language Tagged With: school

Language

October 14, 2013 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

Teaching Language as a Way of Knowing, I wanted to introduce to my students what a powerful tool language is. In keeping with that, I also wanted to bring out how powerless you feel when you don’t have control over a language. So I played some stuff that I learned at the Storytelling workshop I attended recently. […]

Filed Under: Children, Language Tagged With: school

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