June 13 2025

Ms. Abha Arora is a seasoned education professional with a 19-year career. She is the author of ‘PRIMERS’, Lifeskill stories and STEAM activities for young readers.

The session began with the objective of providing a broad overview on the requirement of competency skills in the 21^st century.

 The session covered:

Competency as an umbrella term for different skills such as:

• Communication, critical thinking, creativity(improvise), collaboration, and global citizenship.
• Literacy, media, and digital world.
• Flexibility, leadership, innovation, productivity, self and social awareness.

The main aim of the workshop was to integrate all these competencies to help enhance the teaching-learning process.

These competencies can be used for lesson planning as well as assessment.

There were some interesting activities that were conducted and which were based on the VAK Model (visual, audio and kinesthetics).

Educators were creatively engaged in activities such as:

Riddle activity – This was a group-based activity, it followed the VAK Model.

• Grid activity- This was an individual activity which focused on attention span, chronology, and critical thinking as it had open ended questions.
• Clay activity- This activity was for a group as well as individuals. It was created from scratch using environment safe products. The activity also followed the VAK Model and highlighted the enhancement of motor skills for the little ones and the use of the sense organs.

The activities organised encouraged the teachers to actively participate and created a light and fun learning environment.

All these activities can be repeated and they will yield different results each time.

It can be used for different learners and for almost all concepts.

Key Takeaways:

• Engagement- The activities conducted will ensure active participation as it is fun learning.
• Use of the VAK Model- The VAK Model helps enhance the teaching-learning process and it includes the points of the competencies.
• Play based learning- The activities clay activity uses play based learning which helps increase critical thinking and creativity.
• Subject integration- These activities can be used for subjects that are interwoven as every time an activity is done it will yield different outcomes.

The workshop gave the educators a detailed insight into making the teaching learning process fun and impactful and to help the child in their overall development.