The driving philosophy of NCERT whilst drafting the NCERT Science curriculum and books has usually been to provide students with education material that is ‘true to life, true to child and accurate to science’ . The NCERT has been publishing NCERT Science text books with content that reflects this philosophy.
To make the process of conceptual understanding and understanding systematic,NCERT has divided the whole NCERT Science curriculum from grade 1 to XII into several levels. These levels focus on the progressively incremental nature of the understanding acquiring procedure that emphasizes a sequential building of concepts. A studying method that is sequential in nature assists students realize the concepts simply and also leads to a greater retention of the studied material as it fits into the information schema that already exists with the child. This helps students to efficiently master all crucial concepts especially in the in sciences and maths.
At the first level, that is the primary level , the focus is on ‘exploration’. Here the students are encouraged to explore the world. By means of the various activities and practical workouts in the NCERT Science books, the students are encouraged to gain knowledge through hands-on experience. For example in the primary classes whilst teaching about trees, the students are asked to collect distinct sort of leaves and prepare a scrap book with the names of every single of the leaves.
When a student passes through the first level the next is the upper primary level. Here the stress is on studying by involving the students in group discussions with peers, performing straightforward experiments etc. Under the ‘Extended Learning’ activities in NCERT Science books, the students are guided to explore much more data about the topics already studied. When the necessary details is gathered a classroom discussion following it assists to concretizing the studying and fills the gaps. A group discussion facilitates easy exchange of data. For example, in the NCERT Science book for Class VII an activity in the Chapter ‘Nutrition in Plants’, asks students to visit a greenhouse and observe how plants are raised. They are also asked to collect further info on the regulation of light, water and CO2 and discuss the identical with the classmates.
The next level is the secondary level. Under this level the onus is on learning by way of advanced modules of learning in NCERT Science books. Different initiatives such as the National Talent Search Exam, National Science Exhibitions etc are also organized to assess the grasp of theoretical principles and their practical applications. For competitions like these, the whole syllabus is based on the NCERT Science curriculum.
Fourth and the last level is the higher secondary level. In this level, Science is promoted and taught as a discipline. Under this last level, Science as a composite subject is bifurcated into three to four different subjects like Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Biotechnology. Students studying NCERT Science take up their respective streams and combinations. The NCERT Science Books for these classes focuses on helping students master each and every subject individually so that students pursue higher studies in Science and may even take up the field of Science professionally.