TARA FOUNDATION
WHOLE BRAIN DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME
TARA Foundation in collaboration with SVT Nature Solutions teaches Abacus to its students to create a generation of wholesome students that balances the use of both hemispheres of the brain.
Stories bring facts to life, make the abstract concrete and, through meaning making, walk the listener through the mind of the scientist or mathematician (Ellis, 2005) to understand the value and application of such concepts. Wells (1986) argued that storytelling is a fundamental approach of meaning making. Community participation helps youth become empathetic citizens who could potentially continue similar work when they become adults. Additionally, youth who give back to their communities develop leadership skills, learn the importance of helping, and gain work experiences.
Benefits of storytelling in early childhood education includes :
- Improved language skills
- Heightened memory
- Fosters imaginative, creative thinking and cognitive skills. …
- Encourages enthusiasm for learning, writing and reading. …
- Develops cultural and moral understanding.
- Better communication skills
- Increases curiosity and imagination. …
- Emphasizes focus and social skills.
Since our first batch of students, we have come to realize that most students who transition from primary to secondary school are too studious, and that is all they can or want to do. As soon as we identified a pattern of students who only want to be in the library and not go out to play, or a student who wants to play all the time and not touch his books, we realized that we were headed towards disaster.
This all comes down to which side of the brain students predominantly use, and how it affects them. We came to know for sure, that students were holistic. To provide this balance, TARA introduced Whole Brain Development Programme in all its academic centres, where students learnt how to do abacus and mental Mathematics. A prominent use of abacus in doing Mathematics, gave train students to use both sides of their brains simultaneously. This will train students to be wholesome in most or all of their daily activities.
Using the holistic approach on students from a very young age, is essential in teaching them how to regulate their emotions. For girls, it means to teach them how to control their emotions in times of distress and communicate their shortcoming without any outburst. For men, it means to teach them how to express their emotions in thought, word and deed, as well as the harm of continuously suppressing the way they feel for the benefit of those around them.