Fourth Saturday of every month to be ‘No Bag Day’ in Telangana schools

School Education department aims to make learning more fun with various activities

Hyderabad: From field visits to museums, historical sites, gram panchayats to indoor activities such as science experiments, doodling, model assembly and model elections, learning in the schools will be more interesting, engaging and fun on the fourth Saturday of every month as part of the No Bag Day initiative.

Making learning more fun with various activities besides reducing pressure and bag load on students, the School Education department has marked the fourth Saturday of every month as bagless day in all schools from this academic year.

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The State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERT), a wing of the School Education department, has come out with a handout for 10 bagless days for Class I to X students.

As per this, there will be three sessions – show time, fun station and creative circle for the primary section. Class I and II students will be asked to speak about their family, imitate one of the family members and draw a sketch of a family member as part of these sessions which aim at developing communication skills and creativity.

As part of activity-based learning for Class III, IV and V students, a theme on livelihood has been designed where they will be asked to speak and act on the occupation they like besides drawing the tools used in the profession.

For the secondary level (Class VI to X) students, field visits, including a visit to post office, construction sites, ration shops, apart from family budget survey, model assembly model elections and financial transactions are among outdoor and indoor activities that have been made part of experiential learning. In all, there are 28 activity-based learning concepts for them.

The initiative is mainly aimed at bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application, while exposing students to various work skills, helping them gain insights that enable them make to informed decisions on their future careers.

“As part of the visit to post office, students will be asked to interview the postmaster and postman about their work. They will also be asked to interview householders about the services of the post office. Such visits give students experiential learning and they will get to know about various career opportunities,” an official said.

The secondary school level students will also be introduced to the basics of artificial intelligence and its applications, and career opportunities.