THE CURIOUS CASE OF BIRD FEEDER

"Let the Children Learn How to Think and Use their Learning in Social and Environmental Harmony; Instead of  Learning What to Think?"

Srishti made a bird feeder. Deepu and Deenu saw her trying to tie it to Amla tree's branch and rushed to help her. "Didi, what is this? Let us help you...we will climb the tree and tie it to the branch."

"Thank you, Deenu and Deepu." Shrishti eagerly accepted their help. "Be careful. Please tie it to a slender branch and keep it out of cats' reach."

"Don't worry Didi. We will take care of that too." replied the two friends while climbing up the tree to tie the bird feeder to its branch.

Once the job was done to the trio's satisfaction, Deenu and Deepu once again asked Srishti about the bird feeder and how she had made it.

"Deepu, it is a bird feeder I have made out of waste plastic items like an empty plastic bottle of 7Up, used plastic straw, and a single-use plastic plate. I have filled it up with grains of rice for the birds." 

Satisfied with Shrishti's response to their curious question, both the boys chirped with excitement. "Wow, Didi! we too shall make a bird feeder and tie it to the tree we play on!"

Immediately both the friends were busy making a bird feeder using the same materials and tied it to a branch of their play tree. 

Srishti was an elder sister figure not only to Deenu, Deepu, but also the children from the neighbourhood. She was in her early twenties, an alumnus of the local school, she taught there after graduating in Education from Regional Education Institute. The children studied in the local school where Srishti was now a middle school teacher. They used to take Srishti into confidence while solving their playtime fights and friendly problems. They were open to any solution or idea she would share with them. She was always trying to make something new and the children were always full of curiosity to know what was in their Didi's mind and what new ideas she had to share with them. 

Next morning, all the children visited the play tree to sight the birds feeding on the grains from the feeder. Alas! not a single bird was in sight! After school, the children again gathered beside the tree only to find no birds at the feeder! They would anxiously visit the play tree daily hoping to spot at least a bird using the feeder. Apparently, their effort was in vain! 

After a weeklong wait for the birds to visit the feeder, the children decided to ask Srishti for a solution. 

"Didi, are the birds feeding on the feeder tied to the Amla tree?" the children asked Shrishti.

All of them were standing beneath the Amla tree looking at the bird feeder. The birds had not visited the feeder too and this confused both Shrishti and the children. They tried to find out why the birds ignored both the feeders.

After a lot of fights, argument, and discussion, all of them realised, of late, they had not seen birds perch or nest on the trees. They decided to observe the trees in the neighbourhood to find out birds' favourite trees for their perch both in the morning and in the evening. Everyone was thrilled to take their post in the morning and evening to observe the trees and the birds. Deenu reasoned birds could not spot the rice grains in the plastic bottle because of its green colour. So, he immediately crafted yet another bird feeder using a single-use plastic water bottle made of transparent plastic. Children got together and immediately replaced the bird feeder on their play tree with the new one. Now they had two bird feeders of different colour plastic bottles on two different trees to observe the birds' feeding behaviour.
Children quite enthusiastically observed for a week the two bird feeders and all the trees in the neighbourhood. On the eighth day, they gathered at Srishti's home. While greeting them Srishti observed the children looked sullen and were not their usual chirpy self. She asked them about the information they had gathered through their week-long study.
Sampath, Deepu's cousin replied, "Shrishti di, very few birds seem to perch on the trees. None of them visited the bird feeders. What shall we do! We have wasted our effort  and our purpose of making bird feeders has failed too!"All the children broke into an animated discussion sharing notes with each other. They suddenly fell silent when they realised Srishti was quietly observing them.
Radha asked Srishti, "Srishti di, we all have failed. Now, what shall we do?"
Srishti smiled at them, "No, we have not failed at all! We tried out our idea and now we know we need to work on it a little more to make the bird feeders useful for the birds. Now, tell me, what birds did you sight at different trees throughout the week?"
Ali and Yimi immediately pulled out smartphones from their bags to show the photographs of different birds they had sighted, while the rest of the children verbally shared their list. The children were middle school students. Srishti asked Saraswati, a class eight student to list the names of birds children had viewed.
Children in the group were full of curious questions and Srishti jotted them down. Once they completed writing down their queries along with the list of birds, Srishti summed up the study, "We have seen quite a few birds. Few of them we know while we do not know the rest of them. We would like to know about them; their name, where are they from, what they feed on, etc. We also observed a sad fact, since the old plum tree was axed down, most of the sparrows have lost their home and we do not see them flocking on any other tree. Deenu and Deepu, what was your study of the two bird feeders?"
Deepu cleared his throat trying to overcome the sad truth about the flock of sparrows that used to nest and perch on the plum tree. "Didi, I did not see any bird visit the feeder. We shouldn't have tied a bird feeder to the play tree because we are often playing there. For the second feeder that we tied to Amla tree, it may be due to the rainy season, or the trees we placed the feeders on, or the shape, size, and colour of the feeder. I am sad that it didn't work!..."
Srishti reassuringly replied, "Don't worry Deepu, it is just the beginning of our endeavour and in the process, we will study in detail about different kinds of birds we were not aware of. Now we want to know about them. This will help us revise the design of the feeders and place them in proper locations too."
"How will we do that Srishti di?" asked Vivek, Deepu's friend.
Srishti smiled and replied "We will visit Swaadheen sir, he is waiting for us along with your subject teachers. Let us visit his home and before we go there, I want you all to form six groups and each group should have a child from each class of our school."
"Didi, we are from classes four to eight and why will we visit Head sir's home?!..." asked Deenu looking quite perplexed.
Srishti had anticipated the question "Yes Deenu, it means each group should have at least one person each from classes four to eight. You can have more than one person from each class in a group. Swaadheen sir will help us plan out our group study."
Priti could not contain her curiosity "Srishti di, why we have to form six groups?"
Srishti explained the purpose of the groups while serving fruit juice and sandwiches to the children. "Each group will do a specific study:
 1. A group will gather information about the birds we have sighted; like their feeding habits.
2. A group will map out the trees and birds' nesting sites in the locality.
3. A group will study the seasons and localities' weather conditions.
4. A group will study the habitats of the birds.
5. group will consolidate all the information the four groups collect and everyone's idea on the bird feeder and bird bath's design.
6. A group will workout on how to develop the final design of bird feeder and birdbath and where to place them and report on how much the bird feeder and birdbath have served their purpose.
Friends, now that you know the purpose of each group, choose and form groups according to what interests you. Name your groups. Groupwise you will introduce yourself to Swaadheen sir. While you are at it, do enjoy your snack!"

This is a simple example of using applied curiosity to inspire young learners to be aware of learning objectives and how they can achieve it through :

1. Exploratory Learning: When students make a bird feeder and find birds are not using it. This triggers their curiosity to find out the reason why. This method is effective in making the children ask the questions: Why the birds are not using the bird feeder and how they can make the birds feed on the feeder. This enables the facilitator to facilitate the students to learn the concepts, laws, procedures from and of various disciplines to find out the answers to their questions. 
2. Applied Learning: When the facilitator elicits an idea from the students on how to use waste materials from home viz. empty plastic bottles, single-use plastic spoons etc for creating a bird feeder is a form of applied learning that develops the students' psychomotor skills as well as HOTS learning objectives through exploratory learning. 
3. Experiential Learning: In collaborative group learning, the older students mentor and help the younger students in the exploratory and applied learning process under the guidance of the facilitator. The mentor-student reduces the learning iterations of the younger student with the help of his knowledge and experience. 
4. Collaborative Learning: The entire learning process beginning from why to make a bird feeder to how to make one using waste materials from home, based on a group or team learning method. The older students help facilitators mentor the younger students to effectively answer why and how of the learning objectives. This very objective of collaborative learning effectively integrates it with exploratory, applied and, experiential learning methods making the entire learning process quite effective in living the spirit of Holistic Learning.
5. Social Learning: The fundamental questions: why and how of the learning objective such as responsible use and recycling of objects, when the students achieve through team-effort, the crux of collaborative and holistic learning, the students invariably learn social responsibility. This helps in the students' behavioural and character development too. 
6. Facilitated Learning: Teachers become facilitators to make the learning journey of their students an effective one. The subject teachers viz. Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Language, to collaborate to devise a curriculum that helps the students in achieving their learning objectives through Holistic and Collaborative learning method. This does not require segregating various disciplines-subjects into watertight compartments taught in the laboratory environment of a classroom. The teachers become facilitators who effectively use real-life "Experiential Method", Applied and Exploratory Learning in helping their learners effectively achieve their learning objectives.
7. Vocational Learning: Holistic and Collaborative learning used to devise a learning objective in answering a social problem 
8. Integral to the Holistic (Multi-Disciplinary) Approach to learning: We cannot achieve learning objectives using Holistic(Multi-Disciplinary) Approach to learning without using a combination of Exploratory, Applied, Experiential and Collaborative Learning methods, especially when a learning objective expects the learners/students to answer the questions "Why" and "How" followed by "What" and "When" of a social problem. 
9. Apply their critical thinking, lateral thinking and, creative thinking skills. Please refer to the sample learning activity titled "Paper Greeting Cards."
10. Comprehensive and Continuous Assessment-An Integral Part of Holistic and Collaborative Learning Method: Holistic and Collaborative Learning Method effectively uses Continuous and Comprehensive Assessment Method. Not only the Facilitators but also the student mentors and student mentees assess each other on how effective they have been achieving their learning objectives. Oh yes! each student assess himself or herself on how effective their learning has been in achieving their learning objective to resolve a problem that is also an integral part of the learning objective. Teachers/Facilitators not only device the assessment rubrics that they will use to assess the efficacy of each learner's learning, but also help the student mentors as well as student mentees in devising assessment rubrics to assess themselves and each other. This evaluation will be part of the final formal assessment of students. 
11. Such a combined method of learning helps the learners to develop their psycho-motor skills along with their mental skills (intelligence) and behavioural skills like #appliedempathy, self-awareness and self-discipline that are essential for self-leadership, trust, respect, and love through teamwork.

• This approach helps the learners to effectively develop their thinking skills in terms of Higher Order Thinking Skills.
• This approach effectively integrates Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation of learning a learner achieves without any negative impact on a learner's learning process.
• The approach has students mentoring each other and the teachers (educators) continuously facilitating learning by enhancing learners' learning experience.
• This approach is a paradigm shift from segmented learning or rote learning that introduces various disciplines (subjects) to the learners in tight segments or compartments of subjects like Language, Maths, Science, Social Studies, et al.
• In this learning approach, the Educators(Teacher-Facilitators) can take a social theme like the "Bird Feeder" and map all the concepts associated with the theme. Identify the concepts from various discipline and through this learning approach introduces the concepts and "Depth of Knowledge" regarding each and every concept at different levels of learning, viz. learners from Class Eight can introduce the concept of animal species and different bird species to the students of Class Four and Five, that can reinforce their learning by introducing their class-mates (peer learning) to the concepts and subject teachers can facilitate this formal learning intervention. This Approach easily helps the learners to become aware of a concept, analyse it and synthesise it through its assimilation through applied learning. Therefore, the spirit of this approach is to make the learner aware of bio-diversity and ecological balance. Needless to day, the approach also rids the learning process of the challenges of marks and result oriented rote learning. It invariably helps the learner to develop the behavioural traits of empathy, love, trust, respect, integrity, honesty, resilience, focus, self-discipline, dignity and above all, a pragmatic and positive approach to learning and life. 
• This learning approach effectively integrates all subjects(disciplines) to help the learners' solve a problem through theme-based learning. This effectively helps in their character development as the learners learn to be responsible for the maintenance of sustainable habitat and environment through sustainable living. Facilitators can encourage the learners to such theme-based learning such as "Making a Telescope Using Garbage or Waste Material from their Homes."
• This method of learning can be delivered through FLF (Facilitator-Based-Learning) that using conventional teaching and learning tools with the support of laboratory, library, vocational training workshops like carpentry, electrical, masonry, agriculture-horticulture-garden work, handicrafts, etc. This method can be delivered through Blended Learning with additional and adequate use of computers, tablets, projectors, internet, whiteboards, webcams, and electronic learning tools and software to expand the outreach of the learning to the students in a remote area who have access to the infrastructure and appliances. 

Comment or email (sunipasen@gmail.com) your queries, and suggestions on the case-story and make it effectively applicable for the learners, the formal students.

Thank you.