Rooster Raga at Auxilium, Carona- Aldona

(Posted by Flavia Ferrao)

One Wednesday after noon, at 12.15pm to be precise, Std. IV were waiting expectantly at the door of the library for their class. Sheena had prepared many surprises for them in her own inimitable style. On a bench by the door each of them had to locate their notebook which contained a bookmark with their name on it. They had hardly followed instructions on what to do with their bookmarks and library books, when they realized that another surprise was in store for them – they had to pick a chit with a sound word on it, find other children who had the same word and cluster in groups

‘Teacher what is this word?’, ‘Show me your word, men!’, ‘ Who has ‘Miaaoo’?’ …. was all that could be heard for the next few minutes. A teacher from the next class poked her head into the room in alarm – what was all the noise about?

After all the kids were divided into groups, Sheena made each group make their sounds separately. Surprise number 3 was a song, ‘I am special’ and everyone sang gustily.

Soon it was story-time. Where was all this noise leading to? What was Sheena crowing about with this lesson plan?

All the kids and the other adults followed Sheena as she described how Ru-Ru the rooster could not make appropriate rooster sounds and therefore met all the other animals on the farm in the hope of finding a rooster song. But then he realized that he is unique and all the other chickens like his ‘raga’. Sheena did a great job making all the animal sounds and the kids were delighted.

All the kids participated in the activity based on the story, which required them to write what it was that they think they are special at. They did this with great gusto (quite like Ruru’s raga) and it was wonderful to see that each of them had thought of their    and many of the After selecting story books which they would take home, they all trooped back into their normal school lives hopefully with a bit of Ru-Ru’s spirit left with them. It is okay to just be!