Sarthak Yellow SLATEs
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Sarthak Yellow SLATEs (Sciences, Languages, Arts, Theater and Ethics)
“SLATEs is short for Sciences, Languages, Arts, Theatre and Ethics. Good communications skills are critical for success today. A strong moral compass and robust value system are essential to lead a fulfilled life. Using Sarthak’s custom Naitik Shiksha curriculum and delivering it using Theatre, we work on both these aspects with the children.”
The Yellow SLATEs project introduces the concept of our Yellow Rooms slum intervention model into the government school system of UP.
The government primary and secondary schools of UP suffer from very low learning levels as shown in the 2022 ASER report. For instance, only 16% of standard III children in government schools of UP are able to read a standard-II level text. The school pedagogy is of very bad quality, rife with teacher
absenteeism, corporal punishment and no focus on Social Emotional Learning. Many children of even class VIII have never seen a computer or held a smartphone. These children are at a distinct competitive disadvantage and even if they do manage to complete their education, they will find it difficult to compete with children from better schools.
Government schools of UP serve the poorest and most marginalised children, because even among the poor, those who are economically even marginally better, will get their kids admitted to low-fee-private schools that at-least offer regular classes. There is an urgent need to intervene in the government school system of UP so that the playing field gets a little more levelled and the future of the most marginalised of children is not lost.
The Yellow Slates project introduces a mini yellow rooms inside the government school premise. But it is unique in its approach to pedagogy because we use the element of theatre in the Yellow SLATEs class instruction.
The focus of the Yellow SLATEs project is threefold:
1) improving foundational numeracy and literacy of the children; and
2) improving their communication skills, confidence, feeling of belongingness & community and awareness of and pride in their cultural heritage (Sarthak’s custom Naitik Shiksha Curriculum)
3) exposing the children to digital learning
We take over one classroom in a government composite school (primary + upper primary) and establish a Yellow SLATEs classroom there that functions during school hours as part of the regular school timetable. Each class and child gets to spend 3 hours a week in the Yellow SLATEs room. We envision a Yellow SLATEs intervention for a minimum of three years, which means that each child spends three hours every week for the whole year for three continuous years inside the Yellow SLATEs centre.
We equip each Yellow SLATEs with a Smart Board/TV, a digital lab with tablets and a library of books. We have developed a custom curriculum called Naitik Shiksha that uses stories from Indian sources such as Jaatak Kathaein, Pratham Story Weaver and Amar Chitrakatha. We deliver this using the medium of theatre, storytelling and communication to not only improve children’s listening, writing and reading comprehension but also improve their values, ethics, etiquettes, confidence, communication skills, awareness of and pride in their cultural heritage, empathy, respect for nature, relationship with their community, relationship with their parents and relationship with their teachers.
Using a combination of Sarthak’s STEM curriculum, digital lab, Theatre and Sarthak’s Naitik Shiksha curriculum, we improve children’s foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) as well as their social emotional wellness.
Yellow SLATEs operates inside government composite schools with formal permission from the Basic Shiksha Adhikari (BSA) through the CDO (Chief Development Officer). This Public-Private Partnership ensures sustainability and alignment with UP government school interventions.
Each Yellow SLATEs serves 300 to 800 children per school depending on the number of children enrolled in the school.
We are currently running this model in 13 government schools of Uttar Pradesh, India, serving close to 7458 children.
