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Dear Parents and Students,

Because of the current pandemic, we have missed 9 school days. The press has also been publishing decisions of various schools – how they plan to complete the portion, cancel unit tests etc. Reading all that has made members of the Millennium Family quite anxious to know what our school plans to do and we have been getting a lot of panic calls. We have just lost 9 days of school. Many schools that are panicking were closed much before we were and had lost a lot of school time. Additionally, these schools had to cancel unit tests etc. We were already way ahead of them to begin with. You know, we had finished our unit tests and had a week of school before we had to shut down. So, my first advice to you is – DON’T PANIC!

We have made a very comprehensive study of the textbooks with our teachers in this break and have made a plan of how to make up for the lost portion. There is a different plan for each standard.

Basically, the gist of it is that we have dropped a lesson or two from this unit and we will make it up in the next two units as we have enough working days there. So the portion will not suffer. This is for all classes up to 8th.

However for students of 4th, 7th appearing for the scholarship exams and 8th for NTS exam, we do not have the luxury of making up the portion in the last units as we have to complete most of the portion early. So these students shall be called in on Saturdays and also on a few days of the Diwali vacation in the last week. The details will be conveyed to the students once school starts.

Students of 9th and 10th will be coming to school for the last week of Diwali – the week of the 26th. They will have full day school on these days. The 9th standard will finish 9th standard portion during this time and the 10th will finish the 10th standard portion. So when the whole school starts the 9th will start with 10th portion and the 10th will start with prelims.

So for all students, we will have a few more lessons than planned in the last two units of school. We are going to make an additional facility available for students of std. 3 to 8 in the third and fourth unit. We will be giving all students the facility to access lectures from home. That way they can listen to the lectures again at home and take a lot of practice tests as well. This will help them cope up with the additional portion that they have to study.

We have also cancelled class tests for this unit and have added 10 marks to their papers. That way we will not lose those periods to weekly tests and can utilize them to complete the portion. Then we can execute our plan comfortably.

Another important note is that we have postponed the Kolhapur trip. This has been done so that the children do not have to come together in a group while the pandemic is still on. The trip will now be conducted on 5th and 6th November (Thu and Fri).

While the children are at home, ask them to practice mathematics of the previous unit. They can read Balbharati lessons that will be taught to them in class. Let them also try their hand at reading newspapers and referring to a dictionary for difficult words.

Students who are appearing for competitive exams soon (std 4, 7, 8) should read ahead and be ready for an accelerated learning program when school starts. Keep in touch with Mathematics. Read a lot of story books. Students of class 1 and 2 and kindergarten can refer to starfall.com  as they may be too young to read story books themselves. If you like drawing or craft, this is a good time to do a lot of that too. Get a mechano and try making different instruments. You can also do research on a topic of your choice. All of you have access to the internet. Use this break to your best advantage and make the most of it.

Good luck and see you soon.

Dr. Sudheer Phatak.