We had our second graduation day celebrations on 11th Aug, 2017 at the Music Academy. Mr. Ampa Palaniappan, MD of Ampa Housing Development Private Limited was the chief guest of the occasion. It was a very special day where we recognize a tangible milestone achieved by our students. It is undoubtedly because of the consistent, dedicated and loving efforts of our special educators, therapists, teacher assistants, helpers and all the support staffs of Swabodhini that the below 8 students graduated.

• Primary to pre vocational: Master R. Gurudas and Master R. Deepak
• Pre vocational to Vocational: Mr. M. Praveen Kumar, Mr. S. Amruth and Mr. V.V. Abhishek Rao
• Vocational graduates: Mr. Mahesh Ram, Mr. B. Vishwanath and Mr. V Venkat Naraendar

We are very happy to announce that all the three vocational graduates have started with their work / internship after completing the 18 month vocational skills training program.

We are very happy and proud to announce that our vocational student Mr. Venkat Naraendar, who has completed his 18 month training in retail skills, has started his internship at The Indian Terrain Warehouse. He is currently assigned to the e-commerce division, where he helps in dispatch of online orders.

We also had an orientation session with all the employees at the warehouse to sensitize them about Naraender and what challenges do people with autism have. Our head of education Ms. Sudha Kartik gave a sensitization talk an addressed all the staff and answered their queries. The staff and management at Indian Terrain are extremely supportive and encouraging. We wish Mr. Venkat Naraender all the very best for his future.

Thanks to the support of our generous patrons, Swabodhini now boasts of a brand new sensory park and a sensory room. The sensory park and sensory room is an important therapy requirement for our students, where the sensory stimuli will help in regulating sensory processing and behavior of our students, who often display a hypo (avoiding) or hyper (seeking) sensory behavior.

The sensory path was thrown open for our students on 21st Aug. Sponsored by Rotary club of Madras T Nagar, the inauguration was presided by Retired Air Commodore Mr. R. Jayraman. Rtn Mythili was the guest of honour. President of the club Rtn Mr. Periakaruppan and other rotarians were present for the inaugaration and also had a tour of the school. Special thanks to Swabodhini’s ambassador, Rtn. Ratna Krishnan for championing our cause.

Members of Inner Wheel Club of Madras Central visited Swabodhini for the inauguration of the new speech cum sensory room at the school on 23rd Aug. Donated by IWC Madras Central and sponsored by PDC Mrs. Nallammai Ramanathan, the speech cum sensory room will be of great importance for the therapy of our students.

Mrs. Nallammai inaugurated the room and the members had a tour of the school and interacted with our students. Special thanks to Swabodhini’s ambassador, CA Revathi Raghunathan for championing our cause.

After studying about food, the primary students have moved on to the topic hygiene. Pre vocational students learnt a new set of functional words, place value concept in maths, and were also given typing activities in computer skills and inventory taking in admin skills.

Our retail students were taught Identification of soaps and shampoos, segregation of products based on similarities and arrangement in shelves. Culinary students were taught how to operate the grinder for making idli and dosa batter, how to pour batter in idli moulds along with revision of lessons that were covered the last two months. In multimedia, our students were very much excited to learn origami. Last month, they learnt how to create a story board and this month, they made a story board by cutting and pasting characters into the board.

In August, we had three interns at Swabodhini -Amorita from Abu Dhabi and Kavya from United States, both doing their schooling and took up this activity during their vacation stay in Chennai. They were given various tasks like making of flash cards, sentence strips, charts and posters activities which would be beneficial to primary students as teaching and learning materials. In addition, as an assisting task to our therapists, they were a part of sensory room arrangement which was inaugurated in the third week.

Anasuya who has completed her post-graduation from Banyan assisted in creating library card, registration form formats, game rules for board games and culinary recipe laminated booklets. She has also volunteered along with two of our teachers in Madras Day celebrations held in Anna University.

All the three interns prepared a skit with a theme and interacted with our vocational students who enacted the same. They submitted a report at the end of the internship telling how it was a wonderful and fruitful learning experience at Swabodhini.

August signals the beginning of the festival calendar in India and as always, at Swabodhini, all festivals are an opportunity to incorporate some fun into teaching.

Independence Day and gokulashtami were celebrated together where students came dressed in tri colour. For Ganesh Chaturti, we had puja at school and modhak Prasad was distributed to all.

20 of our school students enthusiastically participated in the annual sports meet conducted for special children by the Special Children Sports Academy –Perambur. Our students participated in in all the running and walking races. Our student, Master Jabez from primary class won 1st prize in 50 mts running. All the participants were given a kit bag and t shirt.

Post graduate students from the Department of Public Health Dentistry of Saveetha Dental College, under the guidance of Dr. Shyamala Chandrasekar visited the school and did a free dental checkup for all our students on 28th august. They also gave a small talk to our special educators on oral health care. Complete diagnosis and also follow up measures were communicated to the parents by the School to ensure good dental health of their wards.

Mrs. Pratyusha Lakshman from Westin Velachery visited the school with her family and donated stationery items for the school. Our students, being visual learners, we use a lot of charts and pictures for teaching. It was wonderful to have her, her mother, sister and her lovely son and nephew at school.

Swabodhini participated in the NGO Fair 2017 conducted by Chennai Volunteers on 18th August. The event was conducted at AVM Rajeshwari Hall and more than 60 NGOs from across the city participated. Chennai Volunteers facilitated the NGOs to interact with volunteers who were willing to share their skills for a social cause.

Three of our staffs volunteered at the Dream Madras 2017 event conducted by United Way of Chennai on 24th August. Dream Madras 2017 – is an inter school competition where students from 110 schools set up their exhibits on the topic Safe Streets. The event was conducted at Anna University.

The month of August had two inauguration ceremonies at Swabodhini –inauguration of sensory park and sensory room. For both the events, our culinary students prepared delicious snacks like sundal, kesari and kichadi for the visitors.

Also, this month, the students started learning how to make sumptuous adai avial. For Ganesh Chaturti celebrations, our students made soft and sweet modhaks. It is very heartening to see our culinary students put in their heart and soul into the dishes and making great progress in their learning.