Getting dressed to meet the children

1. Teacher’s Manual

    As decided in the workshop at Tumkur, articles from various writers were collected. Some of them had to be translated into Kannada. The proposed manual was a ready reckoner for teachers who would be interacting with students after the workshop. It contained a lot of information about blackbuck- its morphology, demography and ecology in the most basic of languages. The target group was teachers from high schools. As there is no educational material readily available on blackbucks and Grasslands it is evident that they are not in a strong position to handle the issue. Neither did their school libraries have relevant books nor had they heard about the possibility of incorporating such issues into the curriculum. As a result we had to concentrate on simplifying the issues and make them usable in classroom teachings.

    Contribution from Mr. Prasanna suggested activities that are handy for both indoor and out door sessions. Some the activities like ‘Web of life’ and ‘Who am I? ’ could be directly linked to grassland issue. A few of the activities had very particular outcome but the local situations would not easily permit the activities in a day’s workshop. Yet the activities like the skit, biodiversity assessment ‘Fish in the pond’ were all incorporated into the manual as suggested activities.

2. Booklet for students

    In fact the greatest challenge in getting this booklet done was its simplicity in terms of words and design. We had to undergo a couple of rewritings simplifying the words in every round. Reducing the size of the text without curtailing information was our first emphasis. The illustrations of blackbucks by Mr. Vinayaka gave life to the booklet. Though the initial idea was to focus the booklet on blackbuck a lot of illustrations of its cohabitants got incorporated. Finally, fixing the right amount of text and relevant pictures on each of the pages became even more challenging and had to be carefully handled. 

Cover page of Student's booklet.

3. Poster for the students

    Students are known to be attached to a favorite picture in there formative years. May be a film star, a cricketer, ultra-modern automobile or in most cases a religious deity. In most of the cases children simply don’t have choices of a relevant picture of their own world. So we decided to come out with a colorful, almost realistic landscape design as a poster. Though the theme was blackbuck and its cohabitants the emphasis was upon grassland-upon which the local community thrived. While it was thought that the poster made a beautiful wall decorative in the study place of the student, it would also work as a reinforcing agent about its learning.

Poster-front.

Poster-back.

4. Sticker and labels

    A sticker was made with a simple photograph and a slogan that called to save the blackbuck. The book labels were kept at the very basic in its design concept. Very clear pictures of six grassland species in its up close mode were chosen. The pictures were placed on the left half of the label. Large space is given to the right where the student can write down the details. Names of particular animal were clearly mentioned below which would be very essential in making the animal popular among the students.

Labels.

Sticker.