Did a test for nursery students. Here are the questions that were part of the test along with the comments.

1. Draw something for me. Most of the children drew a ball, an apple or a balloon. For nursery children, these are things which are simple to draw. The thought that comes to mind, is shouldn’t they be allowed to draw other things, to enhance creativity. One honorable exception was a student, who actually told drew a chair for me. It did end up vaguely resembling a chair.

2. The next question was again related to drawing. I asked students if they could draw me a square. Most of them could. Some of the, even drew triangles for me.

3. After this, students were asked ‘What’s your favourite colour?’ They were then asked to choose this colour from a set of crayons which was made available to them. And then they were asked to colour the circle or balloon that they had made with this colour. Could understand color recognition and motor skills based on this exercise.

4. We discuss basics of counting after this. I asked students to count how many crayons I had given them. Or pencils sometimes. As with Senior KG, students found it difficult to pick up 4 crayons. They were comfortable counting out 4 crayons though. Most of them could count up to 3. Beyond that they had problems.

5. Most students knew the difference between big and small. I used currency notes in order to check this. They knew the size of the notes, but not the values. Khushi being older than the rest of the students definitely demonstrated higher intellectual skills.

6. They were then asked to draw standing and sleeping lines. Most of the students were comfortable with standing and sleeping lines. There were two three students however who had problems with this.

7. I then showed them three smileys and asked them to choose which do not say happy one. More students were not able to get this.

8. There was a question related to basic patterns. I ask them to complete the pattern. About half people could manage a simple dot dash dot dash pattern completion. The rest had problems with this.

9. One innovation was to see their performance in group work. There was a heavy sack of wooden blocks kept in the room. Students came for their test in the staff room, in groups of 3. I asked them to take the sack from one corner and put it in another. Typically, I found that there was one person who would slack and do nothing. One person would be a leader. And the remaining person would be reasonably good follower.

Sr KG Viva, 25-Feb-20

Here are the questions that I had used:

1. __ + __ = some number. (Most students could not do this. They are used to very structured problems. Komal to ensure that they are comfortable with unstructured problems.)
2. 2 + _ = some number. This was done by a few of the students. Those who could not do it were given conventional addition questions. Students like Shlok were stuck in even these conventional questions – they had to be reminded that they can use finger counting to get to the answer.
3. Draw a chappati and color half of it black. Tried this only with Reva. She is a slow learner. Took 10 minutes to understand that the chappati is a circle – and then she went on to color the whole chappati black. She may have understood the concept of half in Marathi – but I insisted on telling her half in English. There could be a language barrier here. But English words like half, which are helpful in math questions – need to be prioritised – and Komal should ensure that all students understand these words. A good idea would be to make a list of such words, by observing difficulties faced by students in solving math problems.
4. How many fan blades are there in the room? All students could get this.
5. Coins and counting. A lot of students got stuck here. Most could recognize individual coins. But, when I asked them to give me 3 Rs, they gave me 3 coins. The problem became graver when the amounts asked for were more than Rs. 6. I think coins are a great way to reinforce addition and subtraction. We used to have a coin box in school. Komal please locate that and start using it. 
6. Draw an object with beginning sound ___. Most students could get this. However, Renuka drew a ‘rack’ and insisted that it was a ‘rat.’ 
7. Draw a shape with __ sides. Absolutely clueless. Not one could get this right. My favourite was 5 sides. Most of them drew a 5 pointed star. They don’t understand the concept of sides. Komal – we can start with triangles and squares before we go to pentagons and hexagons.
8. Had thought ot doing a crossword using pictures of lock and owl. Could not do this. But one of the students did recognize the lock – and could spell it too.
9. Patterns. + + * + + * + … what follows next? Not a single kid could get this. 
10. Had made a jigsaw puzzle of Krishna and Radha swinging. Renuka got it pretty fast. Aditya Manmode was confused as he could not recognize the fact that the Gandhi picture on the back was a separate one. He had to be given a hint in shape identification. Shlok was at sea. He had to be really given a lot of hints for him to get him to solve the puzzle.

Radhika: Math – can do basic addition and counting. Can’t work with subtraction. Gets confused with coins. I asked her for getting me Rs. 15, she got me a 1 Rs and 5 Rs coin. Cute!  

Anushka: The best of the lot that I tested. Drew me a hut and spelt it. Confuses subtraction with addition. 2 + _ = 5. She got the blank as 7. Is able to add coins for values less than 5.

Shlok: Had to be reminded about finger counting, and then could solve basic addition. He confuses beginning sound and ending sound. He drew a ball, when I gave him beginning sound as ‘l’.

Reva: Takes time to understand. Is ok with additions upto 5. Beyond that struggles.

Shreya: Confuses subtraction with addition. 2 + _ = 7. She got the blank as 9. She did get 4 + 4 = 8, though. Beginning sound is Ok. For d – she drew a duck and c – a cap. However she uses mirror writing. And after I pointed out that to her, she corrected it herself.

Renuka: Has issues with correlating names and objects. She drew a flag – and called it frog. Same problem for rack and rat. She did get sun right. Faced problems with patterns.

Aditya Manmode: Could recognize individual coins. Ok in adding till 4 in coins. Drew a kite when I have beginning sound as c. Could not spell kite. However he drew a fish and spelt it correctly for beginning sound f.

Jr KG Viva, 3-Mar

Chose the simpler of the Sr KG questions for Jr. They had to identify coins, pick up coloured pins from a box and identify a simple alternating pattern. Key learnings: Students struggle to understand a question in English. They know the answer when the same question is asked in Hindi. Specific words that they struggle with are prepositions. Here are specific observations:

Raj: Can count, but only in Hindi. Confused between colours and possibly shapes. Could not continue the pattern. He thought he had to count – so he filled in the number 4 in the blank.

Samashree: Counting is Ok. Can identify shapes. Same mistake in pattern as Raj.

Ayush: Asked him to give me 2 yellow and 1 white pin. He gave me 2 and 2. Could draw pattern and triangle.

Rani: Counting Ok. Could give me 3 green and 2 yellow pins. Same mistake in pattern as others.

Anuj: Can identify colours and count. Could draw triangle. Problem with pattern.

Gauri: Got everything right, including patterns.

Khushi: Got everything right, except pattern.

Anirudh: Can count. Got pattern right. Confusion when I asked him to draw a triangle in a square. Can draw both shapes independently.