A very exemplary outdoor classroom project was witnessed by our Kamatha team in Ambagaswewa Maha vidyalaya in Medirigiriya. This project has been implemented by the 2007 O/L batch of Ambagaswewa Maha Vidyalaya to enhance the quality of education delivered to the students of grade 6, 7, 8 and 9 of that school.

Outdoor classrooms are being popular among especially the western communities as a very good method of teaching students natural sciences and even subjects like mathematics,English,music and Social sciences where the students get the opportunity to observe the link of what they learn with nature. This kind of outdoor classes which are sometimes referred to as schoolyard habitats are more suitable for schools in urban areas where the students have a little exposure to nature compared to the privileged those who live much with nature in villages. However outdoor classrooms can be advantageous to everyone as they cost much lesser to be constructed compared to those conventional classrooms with a roof. Above all, these outdoor classrooms can be helpful to students as a natural laboratory to carry out their practical related to natural sciences.

The outdoor classroom observed in Ambagaswewa Maha vidyalaya has been named as “ Swabavika Vidyagaraya ” (Natural Laboratory) which is round in shape. There is also a well managed vegetable garden attached to the outdoor classroom from one side which makes it a perfect place to learn agriculture. All the necessary funds to construct this outdoor classroom have been raised by the 2007 O/L batch under the guidance of the academic staff. Mr.A.R.D.I Wijerathna, the computer teacher and Mr.W.M.Appuhami, the principal have been the two main forces who have driven the students towards the success of this classroom project.

Ambagaswewa Maha vidyalaya is situated in Maha Ambagaswewa which is a rural area in Medirigiriya of Pollonnaruwa. Though the area is less developed, the soil of this land seems very fertile. When we were visiting the area, it was shown to us as a thick green carpet because of the highly densed paddy cultivation. Most of the people here are fulltime farmers who do both paddy and chena cultivations.

The students and the academic staff of this school are very courageous; they try to find their own resources to develop the school without burdening the government much. According to what Mr.Priyantha Abeysekara,the commerce teacher of this school said ,the students of this school had built up their own computer laboratory by selling the harvest of the paddy land which they cultivated.

Education should not merely be a tool to make scholars, but also it should be used to produce well shaped human beings with good humanities. Then only we can produce a good generation who values the human virtues and who can face any challenge to develop this country to a very prosperous status. As I feel, Ambagaswewa Magha Vidyalaya is doing that by blending the knowledge with skills to educate their students.

Gunasinghegoda Maha vidyalaya, a school belonging to the Elpitiya educational division which is situated in Galle district is celebrating its 75 years of education. It has gained a lot of achievements ever since it was started and has become an important institution in the region.

According to its principal Mr. Jayantha de Alwis Jayasekara, it is currently accommodating a total of 625 students along with a staff of 25 teachers. It has classes from grade one up to grade thirteen, but only a small fraction of the students continue their secondary education after completing their ordinary level examination. Most of the students are coming from the neighboring families who do paddy cultivation or cultivating other commercial crops as their main livelihood.

As the principal says the school has achieved a rapid development during the past few years owing to the excellence shown by the students both in academic and extra curricular activities and the constant guidance and support given by the dedicated academic staff. There are lawyers, politicians, engineers and many other professionals who are engaged in various fields and who are past pupils of the school. Even the current principal himself is a product of the school. The principal together with the academic staff have done a tremendous job to bring the school to the state that it operating at the moment.

A unique feature that can be observed in the school is that each and every inch of it has been cultivated. They have used the concept of organic farming for these cultivations and a large diversity of crops has been planted and there's not a single inch of a land that is not greenish. It is further decorated with murals and ponds adding more landscape features which make it a valuable sight for a photographer to capture into his camera.

All these have been done by the students themselves with the guidance of their agriculture teacher Mr. Dayananda along with the help of Mr. Gurusinghe who is an inhabitant of the area and practicing organic farming.

The exhibition has been organised with the intention of showing the whole country about the talents of these students and get help to develop the infrastructure of the school in order to provide the students with a better environment to study.

I'm sure this will give all of us an opportunity to see how successful organic farming can be and how much of pleasure and aesthetic beauty that a field like agriculture can inculcate within our inner minds. So come and experience this difference with your own eyes.