This newsletter from The Amaatra Academy provides information about upcoming activities and programs for students. It describes a "Booster Program" that aims to help students succeed in both short-term goals like exams and long-term goals like higher education and careers. The program combines regular teaching with additional "booster" courses in subjects like physics, chemistry, English, math, and biology at different levels (basic, lift, advanced). It also mentions new houses that students have been sorted into and clubs like the Electronics Club to help students gain practical skills.

1. Copyright © The Amaatra Academy 2013
NEWSLETTER
June 2013
!

2. Copyright © The Amaatra Academy 2013
Welcome students and parents for a brand
new year at The Amaatra Academy. The
year has some exciting activities planned
for the year. One such activity that we
have planned our students is called
–“Booster Program”.
We, at The Amaatra Academy, recognize
that we need to enable children for both
short term and long term success. When I
say short term, it means - success in board
exams and success in competitive exams.
And when I say long term, I am referring
to success in higher education, success at
work and eventually success in life.
Hence we have created a unique program
called the “Booster Program”. Combination
of ‘regular syllabus based teaching’ and
‘our unique booster program’ gives children
enough ammunition to tackle both short
term and long term goals. From 8 AM to 2
PM, which we call as ‘regular hours’ is
fundamentally aimed at teaching children
based on board guidelines covering the
syllabus specified by the board. Here, the
aim is to enable children to score well in
board exams. Every day, from 2PM to 4PM
and full of Saturday, which we call as
‘booster hours’ is aimed at enabling
children to tackle competitive exams,
higher education and work life thereafter.
We are offering 3 levels of booster
courses which we call ‘booster basic’,
‘booster lift’ and ‘booster advanced’.
These courses are offered in Physics,
Chemistry, English, Mathematics and
Biology. Totally, there are 5 x 3, 15 courses,
each one is about 75 hours.
‘Booster basic’ aims at generating interest
in the subject and building very strong
fundamentals, ‘booster lift’ builds on the
fundamentals and develops the ability to
formalize, abstract and apply the
concepts. ‘Booster advanced’ deals with
advanced topics and also enables children
to solve complex problems.
We welcome again you to The Amaatra
Academy and wish you and our students a
great new school year!
Prof Shivananda R Koteshwar Director,
The Amaatra Academy
Editorial from the Director’s desk

3. Copyright © The Amaatra Academy 2013
Whats so special about
Amaatra Booster
Program?
Some of the unique features of booster method of
teaching are:
• Firstly, we have weekday classes mostly aimed
at teaching and demonstrations by our team of
booster teachers (there is a separate team for
booster program) and the weekend classes on
Saturdays called as ‘super Saturdays’, where
children learn through various stimulating and
challenging activities. ‘Super Saturdays’ are
named as Physics day, Maths day etc., so that we
work on a single subject for the whole day
(typically 4 hours). Experiments, group study,
group problem solving sessions, seminars etc.,
are some of the activities that happen on
Saturdays. We do have some extended Saturday
sessions where external resource people are
engaged for specific topics. In fact, interested
parents can also volunteer and sign-up to
participate in this program.
• We do conduct a lot of tests and exams but the
way we do it is quite different. We believe that,
after every exam or a test taken by a student,
his/her confidence should increase, NOT
plummet. So we conduct various kinds of exams,
through these exams, we steer the students
towards strength so that they develop liking for
exams rather than fear or hate.
• A portion of the teaching is also through
presentation method, where we have the
students come and present a new topic they
have learnt to their classmates. This helps
encourage public speaking and ability to connect
the dots and come up with the large picture.
Post the presentation, we conduct an open
discussion about the topic where the students
are encouraged to ask questions. We conduct
marathon problem solving sessions in physics
and maths and also conduct quizzes in biology
and chemistry
• This program is designed and developed at
Amaatra with the help of industry experts and
academicians
• The program is being delivered by some key
resource people who has joined us full time from
Industry and very strong experienced
academicians
With prior appointments, parents and siblings of
our wards are welcome to attend and experience our
program .
Prof Shivananda R Koteshwar
Director

4. Copyright © The Amaatra Academy 2013
At The Amaatra Academy, we motivate our students to practice and strive for excellence. Goal-setting is a
very powerful motivating force.
Having your students fill out goal sheets can serve as a terrific tool for
student motivation. Students feel ownership of their learning when they
feel they have an impact on the final result. By reading our students’ goals,
we have an awareness of their hopes for the program and where they
would like to see themselves at the end of the year and by the time they
pass out of the college. Once we have this knowledge, we can help them
reach these goals and, in some cases, shape their expectations to a more
educationally sound foundation.
The goal sheet will be an integral document of the overall academic record
the school will maintain. The activities for your child will be tailored
around this goal sheet. Till your child is a student in our school, this will be a living document, every year
there will be milestones achieved in meeting the goal will be recorded and any roadblock or learnings will
also be recorded. The goals can be tweaked or changed during the course of stay at school.
As a part of the goal setting exercise, we have gotten our students to fill the goal-sheet with SMART goals to
meet. The inputs from the goal sheet has already been provided to class and subject teachers to tailor the
lesson plans for our students
Goal Setting Exercise @ The Amaatra
Academy
Electronics Club
The Amaatra Academy in its quest towards science excellence want our students interested in engineering
and technology to improve their practical skills, also want them to gain an appreciation of the technology that
allows them to go about their day-to-day business. Enter the “Electronics Club”, which is running for the first
time this year.
The aim of the Electronics Club is to develop practical skills in
building circuits and to help embed a practical understanding of
how the basic circuit laws and components work together to allow
systems to be designed and constructed.
The Electronics Club is organized as a series of 90 minute workshop
sessions, once a month, led by technicians and a senior faculty from
PES College of Engineering, working through a program of practical
exercises starting with simple circuits and finishing with building
systems.
Students who want to experiment more, or who want help with their
circuits have the opportunity to stay on for another hour or more with technical support available to help
them.
We have had tremendous response for this club. All electronics students in 11th and 12th grade have been
mandatory enrolled into this club. Around 30kids have signed-up for this club.

5. Copyright © The Amaatra Academy 2013
We have sorted our students into houses for the purpose of increasing daily communication, to coordinate services
for students and to give House Deans the ability to develop a team approach. Collaboratively they improve student
achievement and personal, social and emotional growth. Counsellors assist students in planning, monitoring and
managing their academic, personal and career development.
The four houses at The Amaatra Academy are – Charaka, Sushruta, Panini and Aryabhata.
The house sorting was based on a series of competition held at the school campus during the super Saturday
program – 22nd June 2013. We have already communicated to each of you the house your child has opted for
during his/her stay at The Amaatra Academy.
Amaatra Houses
Please feel free to revert to me or staff at The Amaatra
Academy in case of any clarifications or to understand the
progress we are making on the topics discussed.