“I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” – Albert Einstein

An In-house capacity building workshop was organised on Conceptual Teaching for the teachers of SAI International School on Wednesday, May 16, 2019. Facilitator Shri Nilakantha Panigrahi, Sr. Vice Principal, SAI International School gave training on how to operate conceptual workshop by involving students in the teaching-learning process.

He outlined the importance of conceptual understanding in education and reinforced the learning through group activities. During various activities, the participants prepared conceptual workshop rubrics in an effective manner. They also made inter-disciplinary science subject demonstration where a teacher of chemistry taught physics or biology and vice versa.

Shri Panigrahi also demonstrated through mind maps and activities on how conceptual understanding supports retention. Through Bloom’s Taxonomy, he emphasised the importance of applications and analysis which enables children to retain the learning for a longer period of time. He asked the teachers to focus more on experiential or hands-on learning for the optimal benefit of the students. He said that conceptual learning is an educational method that centres on big-picture ideas and learning how to organise and categorise information. The method implies that concepts come first. Here focus is given more towards understanding of concepts, principles, theories, models, classifications etc through thoughtful mental activity.