VOLUME VII – CHAPTER 13
CREATIVE HOME WORK
Projects or Assignments are not to be based on the text book or require recall from memory. They should stimulate curiosity – make the students go to the library – read books and magazines, meet and interview people – visit organisations and gather related information from different sources, collate them, Assess, synthesise and make a meaningful report.
The projects given below will ignite, trigger and stimulate the minds of students towards engaging themselves in a purposeful intellectual endeavour.
Whenever the author went to any class as a substitute teacher, he used to put these questions to make them think.
The author and the children learnt with each other and from each other. It was a wonderful, useful and happy CO-LEARNKING.
CREATIVE HOME WORK
1) A leader is expected to have and demonstrate competencies in the areas of vision, risk taking, influence and creativity.
Find out leaders around the world who possessed and demonstrated these competencies in various fields of activity.
2) Collect a list of Nobel Prize winners in your subject – try to explain in a simple language what you have understood to be his achievement and how it will benefit humanity.
3) List out the book that has impressed you much. Give the reasons for it. Mention one sentence in that book which has influenced your life
4) “To learn is not to know” said a great thinker. According to you, what is learning and what is knowing? How do you think learning can be converted into knowing?
5) List three concepts you have learnt in your subject this year. Explain their basic premise and describe how they are applicable in life.
6) From the dreams that inspired and motivated them, full of blood, sweat and tears that built them, find out the complete story of six wonderful structures that are masterpieces of architecture.
Petra – Alhambra – Hagia Sophia – St. Pauls Cathedral – Machu Picchu –Angkor Wat.
Find out the unique features of each.
7) Can you find out the reason for the death of these great men.
a) Herod 73.4 B.C.
b) Pericles – 495 – 429 B.C.
c) Alexander – 350 – 323 B.C.
d) Columbus – 1451 -1506
e) Mozart – 1756 – 1791
8) You have heard about the “Leaning Tower of Pisa” in Italy, whose tilt is five degrees.
In Pisa there are three more leaning towers.
a) La Torre Di Pisa – 1370 A.D. Tilt Five degrees.
b) San Michele Degli Scalzi – 1100 A.D. Tilt Five degrees.
c) San Nicola – 1250 A.D. Tilt 5 Degrees
Find out how these towers have been stopped from tilting.
9) By God’s Grace, if you become the President of India and you visit your old teacher, then:
Is the teacher great because the President visits him?
(or)
Is the President great because he remembers to call on his teacher?
10) “Today’s Rich feel Poor” – Why?
11) Have you ever thought about these three things:
a) Where you study?
b) What you study?
c) Whom you study from?
12) You want to be a winner? Then, find out what all it takes to help you become a winner.
13) The great American writer Lawrence Clark Powell wrote:
“Write to be understood
Speak to be heard
Read to know.”
Think what efforts you have taken to be an example of this statement.
14) An old Chinese proverb says:
“There is nothing you cannot be
There is nothing you cannot do
There is nothing you cannot have.”
What do you want –
To be
To do
To have
What are your efforts to reach these three goals?
15) Find out what are the mathematical models inspired by the process of revolution.
16) You know what happens when you kick a stone. Thanks to Physics, you can predict its direction, velocity and destination. But, when you kick a sleeping dog, you can’t predict- Why?
17) Do you know how the Santals of Odisha and West Bengal, Meiteis of Manipur, Angami Nagas of Nagaland, Gujjars and Gaddis of Rajasthan and the Todas of Nilgiris are living. Find out the unique features of their ways of living.
18) Charles Darwin said:
“It is not always the strongest that ends up leading the pack – it is the smartest.”
Are you the smartest?
What are you doing to become the smartest?
19) Shivaji’s great inspiration was his mother. Find out details of mothers, who had shaped the lives of their children (Leaders) in various countries.
20) If you are good at painting, visit temples, paint the outer and inner infrastructure in line drawing. If you immerse yourself in the thought of God and fill yourself with devotion and love, then you can paint the presiding deities realistically.
21) Find out the titles of pontiff of different religious sects around the world, and the process of selection and anointing them.
22) If you see a picture of Lord Siva, you will see on His head and on His neck, bees will sit on the former to suck honey, but they avoid the latter.
Can you find out similar flowers which the bees avoid and the reasons there of?
23) During weekends visit an Orphanage or an Old Age Home. Talk to them, try to understand their feelings of deprivation, isolation, lack of affection and indifference.
Find out ways of helping, carving, and serving them as fast as you can. Their blessings will be your greatest asset.
24) Visit a community of labourers living on the platforms like the Broadway Mofussil Terminus in Chennai. Live with them for three days and two nights and try to understand two contrasting things – their poverty as well as their happiness.
25) Visit the construction site of a high rise apartment building. Observe the work life of the labourers for the whole day and in the evening find out what they feel about their daily lives in comparison with that of those for whom they are building rose luxury flats.
26) If you see a man entering a sewage man-hole for manual cleaning, wait till he comes out and then ask him how he feels about his job and what his family members feel about it.
27) Find out the following and try to understand their agony and suffering and record your response to those situations:
Single mother with a son or a daughter – divorced, driven away, lost her husband, working as a cook, as a servant maid.
Single father with a son/daughter – widower, divorced, wife walked off, working in an office, touring job, working as a watchman, drover.
28) Have you thought about the things you have to do (short term goals) and the things you have to become (long term goal)? It is high time you thing about these. Put them down in writing and start taking steps methodically to reach them. Start now!
29) Why should you wait till the final year end examination to evaluate you? Why don’t you start examining and evaluating yourself at the end of everyday, your academic as well as social life according to criteria decided by yourself.
30) As an educated person, how would you educate your neighbourhood people about their rights and duties as a responsible citizen? ..
31) Visiting the local temple, you find it full of dirt, cobwebs bushes all around. What will be your response?
32) On your way back home from school, you see a van hitting a cyclist and speeding away. Going near, you find the cyclist unconscious but alive, what will be your reaction?
33) Just before assembly you walk past, the school ayah forlorn in a corner and on enquiry, you learn that her child is very sick at home in the care of his grandmother and that she is unable to purchase the medicines prescribed by the doctor. What will your mind say? What will your heart say?
34) You are sitting in a train near the window. The train has just started moving, you see a person running on the platform trying to get into your compartment. He loses his grip over the handle and falls in between the train and the platform.
35) In the election held in May, 2016 – The Newspapers Headlined:
You have a vote
You have a right to vote
You have a duty to vote
Don’t waste your vote.
Do you think whether this holds good for the following:
The President
The Vice – President
The Speaker
Judges
Governors
Religious Heads
Should they be political or apolitical?
36) God is very clever and also kind. He has created animals in different areas of the world and given them several features in their body to safeguard them from the dangers in the climate. This is a natural endowment to the animals. But human beings have nothing like this. He has to create artificial devices to save himself.
Find out the natural endowments God has given to animals and the ways of humans to protect themselves.
37) The word ‘Museum’ will at once remind you only of the Government Museum at Egmore, Chennai and the Archaeological Survey of India Museum in Fort St. George, Chennai.
But do you know there are several other Museums which specifically deal with interesting themes such as:
- Rail Museum
- 3D Art Museum
- Sea Shell Museum
- Light House Heritage Museum
- Toilet Museum
- Health Information Museum
- Dolls Museum
- Human Brain Museum
- Car Museum
- Insect Museum
- Textile Museum
- Kite Museum
- Salar Jung Museum
Find out details about these and also any other Museum like this in our country and abroad.
38) Map making was a secret jealously guarded as a secret in the earlier centuries. Find out why it was so also find out the early efforts in Map making and how it has evolved over the centuries among the various countries of the world.
~~~~~
VOLUME VII – REFERENCES
[table id=1 /]
~~~~~
MANY people think that Concentration is the same thing as Meditation, but there is no such connection between Concentration and Meditation. Concentration is something which is below your senses, whereas Meditation is something which is above your senses. But many are under the false impression that concentration is identical with Meditation and they take to a wrong path. Concentration is something which we use involuntarily in our daily, normal routine life. – Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba
