The Astronomy club aims at instilling scientific interest and skills in the young minds through intelligent application of astronomy and space science.
The club plans to infuse astronomy into the educational spectrum of children through different modules like presentations ,night star gazing, visits to the planetarium etc. As part of the activities the club will also provide hands on experience on making working models of telescope rockets.
Pottery is an art of portraying thoughts through clay. It helps to develop creativity. It encourages us to think out of the box, and by this, ‘Imagination’ is made ‘Reality’. This art and culture which has been initiated as an activity, has about 60- 70 children practicing it. Each pottery class, children are instilled and infused with a new idea as to what should they make in pottery each day.
The Dancing Queens club has done much to spread the art of dancing in Carmel. The club puts up various performances, participates in inter-school competitions and has gained much exposure with the support of the club.
Theatre is the primary mode of expression. It helps in increasing confidence and self esteem and improves clarity of speech. Creativity stems from the sincere use of body, mind and spirit. Stage Art involves extensive use of creativity and imagination to mould the personality of students.
Gitanjali School has a Brass Band. The Brass Band contains instruments such as trumpet, clarinet, euphonium and drums. The band class is for 6th to 8th class students. The practice for band is held at the activity period. This band has performed at various events like the school annual sports day, independence day and republic day. It has also performed in front of foreign school delegations. The band plays western march, Indian march, fanfares at the time of arrival of the foreign school delegations.
The Cyber Club encourages students to develop their technical skills and acts as a platform for deserving students to showcase their talents in computer applications. Under the guidance of Sr. Teachers the club has trained students in various computer applications such as Movie Making, animations and Digital Photo Editing. The club has brought in professionals to train the students in computer animations.
The public speaking club activities are open to students of classes 6th, 7th and 8th. The aim of the club is to help the students to become eloquent speakers and overcome their fear of public speaking. We have two professional resource persons who conduct interactive sessions with the students twice a week.
As the name suggests, the club focus is in helping students reach a new level in their artistic endeavors. Students will be able to show their creativity by exploring various art and craft forms, experimenting with different techniques and incorporating their skills into it through projects, artworks and product designing. Various projects like Paper Mache, puppet making, still life sketching, Nature sketching have been planned in sequence for the club.
The Photography Club club teaches students the basics of photo composition. In one exercise the girls keenly sought out subjects on the school premises, framing them in accordance with the theoretical knowledge gleaned in the classroom. On another exercise, the students armed with their cameras went around the school in search of capturing colour. On both occasions, their pictures were projected on the screen in the classroom and viewed collectively. Besides looking at colour and the rules of composition, the students have also been introduced to other elements of photography like depth of field and capturing motion with changes in shutter speed. Photographs culled from different sources that illustrated these concepts are projected and discussed within the Club. The works of the students are displayed during PTMs.
Reporting essentially involves recognizing what is news and then finding the relevant facts related to it. For the first few classes my aim was to make the students aware of how to filter news from non-news.
While interacting with the students, I realized most of them were not in the habit of reading the newspaper. I tried to ask them relevant questions, which would make them go back and explore those issues such as the on-going inflated power bill issue, Arvind Kejrwal's hunger strike or the recent earthquake. Classes were divided into print, broadcast and Web media so that students could distinguish between the different mediums and how our writing has to change depending on the medium.
Right from teaching them the nuances of writing for the print media, which involved teaching them the technical aspects of writing such as the headline, sub-head, the lead (introduction to the story), the way a news story is written in an inverted pyramid format (wherein the most important point is stated first), students were taught the difference between hard news and soft news (feature writing).
To find out whether students had understood the theoretical part, activities were assigned to them wherein they were asked to write stories in a time-bound manner and on the spot. It is essentially while writing these stories that students were able to understand the technical aspects of news-writing such as writing for a targeted audience, the importance of interviewing people and how to quote them in a story.
Quiz club is an interesting activity being conducted in Gitanjali School. This club emphasizes on increasing the student’s general knowledge in all fields. It is done through smart boards and quiz placards. Quiz competitions are held regularly. Students are encouraged to become Quiz Masters.
The club tries to develop the students' potential and interest when it comes to creativity, innovation and scientific skills, with competitive activities like construction of straw bridges and towers. The club aims at developing their interest and helping in conceptual understanding and application through activities like electroplating, making of electrochemical cells and models of circulatory systems, etc. The students learn to work together in small groups right from planning to execution of projects.
The Environment club aims at promoting an environmental awareness among the students and the society. Carmel’s contribution to the cause of environment has always been highly appreciated.
