Juhu schoolkids turn teachers, set question paper

Juhu schoolkids turn teachers, set question paper

It's exam season at Juhu's Utpal Shanghvi School. But instead of sweating it out, the students are busy setting question papers and worksheets for mock exams as a part of a learning exercise. As a unique teaching method, the IGCSE affiliated school allowed its Class 6 students to set their own test paper for Gujarati and Class 3 students were asked to create their self-study worksheets for Geography. They also corrected their classmates’ answer sheets. The school plans to replicate such exercises in other classes soon. Through these exercises, students gained first-hand experience of playing teachers. Apart from setting the papers and allotting marks, students were also allowed to get creative with and make the question paper appealing with drawings and diagrams. The exercise was also a part of their ICT module for the Class 3 students. They created worksheets using word processor. The papers were shuffled among the students and every student corrected the paper that they had set. “Students aped their teachers drawing circles and writing remarks on the answer papers. They were actively involved in the exam process,” said principal Abha Dharam Pal. “Now that they have actually set and corrected papers, they are familiar with the mentality of the examiner. This will help build their confidence and reduce their fear of exams.” Dakshit Shah, a class 6 student, said it took him more than an hour to decide the questions he wanted to put in the paper. “I chose questions that my classmates would find tough to crack.” Gujarati teacher Alka Mehta said the objective was to help develop students' grammatical and analytical skills. “It was as a good exercise that made students revise and come up with questions that even we had missed over the years.” Earlier the school had introduced a system wherein teachers would sit for exams with the students and answer the papers they set to gauge the level of difficulty and how time-consuming it would be.