Shobhita Kapila (French teacher) and I attended the NESA Spring Educators Conference in Cairo from 4-7 April, 2009.I was quite impressed with Tom Gusky’s session on ‘Assessing for Success’. Tom (Distinguished Service Professor at Georgetown College, Kentucky) gave us new strategies for assessment. A good order in a course would be Lesson-Lesson-Assessment 1-Detailed discussion on the answers-Parallel Assessment to 1(same concepts tested). I tried this with my grade 12 Physics class and saw a 40 % (and more) increase in grades!
Shobhita attended Marcia Tate’s Institute ‘Worksheets don’t grow dendrites’. Very practical ‘brain-based’ teaching strategies were presented. Shobhita also presented a workshop titled ‘Technological approaches to teaching foreign languages’ which was well appreciated by all six delegates who attended. A highlight for us was our meeting with Susan Baum (Director, International Center for Talent Development) and Henry (Hank) Nicols (Expert on Emotional Intelligence) (See photograph). Both of them are eager to visit KIS.
Navam Pakianathan (NESA rep and physics teacher)
