NCERT Solutions for Class 5th The World Around Us Chapter 4 Closing questions — Let us reflect

Book page 71–72 Updated on2026-09-19

Q1.

Out of all the classrooms in your school, which one do you think is the nicest and why?

Answer

Walk into three or four classrooms and look properly before you answer. A good answer names the room and gives reasons you can see, not just “it is nice”.

What to look at	What makes a classroom good
Light	Windows on more than one side; bright enough to read without the tube light
Air	A breeze passes through; it does not feel stuffy at noon
Coolness	A tree outside the window, or a light-coloured roof
Cleanliness	Clean floor, clean benches, no scribbles, a dustbin in the corner
What is on the walls	Children's own drawings and charts, a reading corner, a class notice board
How it feels	People are friendly; nobody sits alone; you can ask a doubt without being laughed at

Sample answer: “I think the nicest classroom in our school is the Class 3 room on the ground floor. It has big windows on two sides, so the breeze comes right through and the lights are not needed till the afternoon. The gulmohar tree stands just outside the window and keeps the room cool even in May, and in April the flowers come right up to the window bars. The walls are covered with the children's own drawings and a big handmade calendar, and there is a reading corner with a mat and a shelf of story books. It also has a green bin and a blue bin in the corner, and the benches have no scribbles on them because that class cleans its own desks every Friday.

But the real reason I like it is our own room, Class 5B. It is not the brightest room, and the paint is old. It is the nicest to me because nobody in it sits alone at lunch, and when I get a sum wrong nobody laughs.”

Why the last part is the best answer: Light, air and paint make a room comfortable. Only the people in it make it happy. A plain room where you are treated kindly is a nicer place than a beautiful one where you are afraid to speak.

Q2.

Create a happiness tree. On a wall or chart paper, draw a large tree with many branches. Each student should add a ‘leaf’ with one small action written on it that makes the school a happier place (for example, greeting someone, turning off lights, sharing space, etc.).

Answer

How to make it — 6 steps

Take a large chart paper, or use a bare wall with brown paper stuck on it.
Draw a thick brown trunk and many branches spreading out — enough for one leaf per child, with room for more later.
Cut leaf shapes from green paper. Make a few in yellow, orange and pink too, so the tree looks alive.
Each child writes one small action on a leaf, in their own handwriting, with their name small in the corner.
The rule: it must be something you can actually do this week, and something small. Not “I will make everyone happy”.
Stick the leaves on and put the tree where the whole school walks past — the corridor, not inside your classroom.

Leaves for the tree — real examples

Kindness	Care of the school	Care of the earth
I will greet the guard and the sweeper by name every morning	I will pick up my own wrappers after lunch	I will close the tap tight after drinking
I will call the new boy to play with us	I will not scribble on the bench	I will switch off the fan when I leave the room last
I will not laugh when someone gets an answer wrong	I will keep my desk and my bag tidy	I will water our sapling on Mondays
I will share my colours with my bench-mate	I will put the chairs back after assembly	I will write on both sides of the page
I will say sorry when I am wrong	I will report a leaking tap to the office	I will bring my tiffin in a steel box, not in foil
I will thank the cook for the mid-day meal	I will move aside on the stairs for the little ones	I will put peels in the green bin
I will make room on the bench for one more	I will hold the door for the person behind me	I will pour my leftover bottle water into the plants

Why the tree works better than a list of rules: Rules are given to you by somebody else. A leaf is a promise you wrote yourself, in your own handwriting, in front of everybody — and it stays on the wall where you walk past it every day. That is a very different thing from a rule on a notice board.

Make it live: after a month, let anyone who has actually kept their promise add a small paper flower or a fruit beside their leaf. By the end of the term the tree should be in flower — and if it is not, that is worth talking about honestly in class too.

Q3.

Sharing one’s feelings is exciting. Write a letter to your teacher on ‘My School — My Happy Place’.

Answer

What a good letter must have: the date and the address at the top, a greeting (“Respected Ma'am/Sir”), three or four short paragraphs, and a closing with your name and class. In the middle, write about real things in your own school — a place, a person, a moment. One true detail is worth ten general sentences.

Sample answer

Class 5B
Government Primary School, Rampur
12 August 2025

Respected Ma'am,

I am writing to tell you why my school is my happy place. I have wanted to say this for a long time, but it is easier to write it than to say it aloud.

The first thing I love is the neem tree at the corner of the playground. My friend Meera and I sit under it every lunch break and share our tiffin — she brings aloo paratha on Wednesdays and I bring my mother's chana. It is cool there even in May. Last month we saw a woodpecker on that tree, and we were the only two people in the whole school who saw it.

The second thing is our library period on Thursday. I have read eleven books from that shelf this year. When I could not read properly in Class 3, you did not tell anyone. You gave me a thin book with big letters and told me to read one page a day. Now I read a whole book in a week. I do not think I have ever thanked you for that, so I am doing it now.

I also like what our class has done this year. We made two teams, Water Watchers and Green Guardians, and we found four leaking taps and got them repaired. We planted a guava sapling near the gate, and I water it every Monday and Thursday. When it gives fruit I will not be in this school any more, but somebody will eat that guava, and that thought makes me happy.

My school is my happy place because I feel safe here, because nobody laughs at me when I get something wrong, and because I always have something to look forward to when I wake up.

Thank you, Ma'am.

Yours obediently,
Sameer Kumar
Class 5B, Roll No. 14

Write your own: use this shape but not these facts. Answer four things — one place, one person, one thing you did, and one thank-you. Write about your school, not about schools in general. That is what makes a letter worth reading.

Q4.

Which actions would you extend to your home, neighbourhood and communities to make it a happy place for all? Describe any one of them in detail.

Answer

Everything in this chapter works outside the school gate too. Here is a short list first, and then one action described in full, as the question asks.

Place	What I would take there
Home	Two bins — green and blue; a compost pot for peels; close taps tight; switch off lights when leaving a room; keep old newspapers for the raddiwala
Neighbourhood	Do not throw waste in the street or the drain; plant and water trees on the lane; keep water for birds in summer; keep the street's shared water tap from running
Community	Greet the sweeper, the guard, the postman and the vegetable seller; help an old neighbour carry something; include the children nobody plays with; keep the park and the pond clean

The one I would describe in detail: a compost pot at home

Why. More than half of what our home throws away is kitchen waste — peels, leftovers, tea leaves. All of it can become manure instead of going to the dump.
What I need. One old plastic bucket or an earthen pot with a few holes at the bottom, a plate to stand it on, a small trowel, and a bag of dry soil or dry leaves. Cost: almost nothing.
Where. In a shady corner of the balcony or courtyard, off the ground on two bricks.
How to start. Put a layer of dry leaves at the bottom. Then, every evening, put in the day's peels and cut them small.
The one rule that matters. After each day's peels, cover them with a handful of dry soil or dry leaves. This is what stops the smell and the flies. People who skip this step give up in a week.
Keep it right. No plastic, no glass, no metal, no oily food. Turn it with the trowel once a week. It should feel damp like a squeezed sponge, not wet like mud.
Wait. In about two months the bottom of the pot is dark, crumbly, sweet-smelling soil.
Use it. Put it in the tulsi pot, the money plant and the curry leaf plant. They grow visibly better.
Then spread it. Show one neighbour how to do it and give them a handful of your compost to start with.

Why this small thing is worth the trouble: It cuts our home's waste by half, and it cuts it at home — so nothing has to be carried, sorted or dumped. It gives free manure. And it turns waste from something we get rid of into something we make. Once a family has seen peels turn into soil in their own pot, they never look at a dustbin in the same way again.

Q5.

Imagine a day in school from someone else’s perspective. Choose any one of the following: • A student who navigates school using a wheelchair. • A student who speaks a different mother tongue. • A sanitation worker at school. Write a diary entry from their point of view. What they felt? What was easy or hard? What made them smile or worry?

Answer

How to write a good diary entry from someone else's point of view

Write as “I”, and put the date at the top.
Follow one real day, hour by hour — arriving, class, break, lunch, going home.
Write the small, exact things: a step, a doorway, a word you did not understand, a person who smiled.
Include both — what was hard and what made you smile. A real day has both.
Write them as a whole person with their own likes, jokes and friends. Not as somebody to be pitied, and not as a hero either.

Sample answer — a student who uses a wheelchair

18 July 2025

Today started well. Papa dropped me at the gate and Imran was already waiting there, as he is every morning. He took my bag so I could push the wheels myself. I like doing that part myself.

The corridor to our room is flat, so that was easy. Getting in was not. The classroom door has a step of about four inches and I cannot get over it alone. Imran and Rakesh lifted the front wheels the way they always do. It takes ten seconds and they do it without making anything of it, which I am grateful for. But I thought today: a small wooden ramp would cost less than one bench, and then nobody would have to lift anything.

In the second period Ma'am asked me to write the answer on the board. The board is high and I cannot reach the top half. I wrote low down, on the left, and she moved the whole lesson down to my line so nobody had to bend. Nobody said anything about it. That was the best moment of my day.

Lunch was hard. Everyone eats sitting on the ground under the neem tree and I cannot sit there, so I stayed at the bench near the door and ate alone for a while. Then Meera brought her plate over and sat on the bench with me, and after that four more came. Now I am wondering whether we should just move the whole lunch spot to the benches. Nobody has thought of asking.

The toilet is at the far end and the door is narrow. I go only once, in the morning, and I drink less water than I should because of it. I have not told anyone this. Maybe I should tell Ma'am tomorrow.

Games period made me happy. They made me the umpire for kho-kho and I had the whistle, and Rakesh argued with every single one of my decisions, exactly the way he argues with everybody. I liked that he argued with me the same as with anyone else.

Going home, Papa asked what I want most in school. I said a ramp at the classroom door and a wider toilet. He said we will write to the principal together. I am not sad. I only wish the building had been built thinking that someone like me would come to study in it.

If you choose the other two, here is what to include

Whose day	What was hard	What made them smile
A student who speaks a different mother tongue	Not following the teacher's fast speech; not knowing the word for things in the class language; being laughed at for saying a word differently; not being able to join a joke; feeling tired by afternoon from listening so hard	A friend who explains quietly in one word; a teacher who writes the word on the board; being asked to teach the class a song in her own language, and the whole class trying to sing it; being praised for maths, which needs no language
A sanitation worker at school	Starting before six; the same wrappers in the same corners every day; mixed bins that have to be pulled apart by hand; being cut by broken glass in a wet bin; being called by the work rather than by name; no gloves	A child who says good morning; the corridor looking clean when the children walk in; a class that thanks him in assembly; the day someone finally learnt his name; the mid-day meal shared with him

Why this question is here: The whole chapter has been about making school a happy place. But happy for whom? Until you have spent a day thinking from inside someone else's day, you cannot know which things in your school are actually a problem. That is why the ramp, the wide toilet door, the lunch spot and the gloves in this answer are all found by imagining, not by inspecting. Kindness begins with noticing.

Q6.

As principal for a day, what three changes would you make to enhance happiness, safety and greenery in your school?

Answer

Pick exactly three — one for happiness, one for safety, one for greenery. Say what you would do, how, and what would change. Three real changes are worth more than a list of twenty wishes.

Sample answer — my three changes

Change 1 (happiness): fifteen minutes of Circle Time every Friday.

What: Every class sits in a circle for the last fifteen minutes on Friday. Anybody may say one thing that made them happy this week and one thing that troubled them. Nobody interrupts. Nobody is forced to speak.
Why: Most troubles in a school — teasing, being left out, sitting alone at lunch — are invisible to teachers because they happen quietly. Circle Time is how they get said aloud.
What would change: Children who are being left out get noticed. And every class would learn to listen without laughing.

Change 2 (safety): fix the gate at closing time.

What: A painted zebra crossing outside the gate, a “SLOW — SCHOOL AHEAD” board 30 metres before it on both sides, a marked parking bay away from the gate, and a rule that no child steps out of the gate until their adult or vehicle is there. Classes 1 to 3 leave five minutes before Classes 4 and 5.
Why: Our Traffic Trackers counted 27 vehicles in ten minutes and only 8 slowed down. The youngest children step out from between parked autos where drivers cannot see them.
What would change: The most dangerous ten minutes of our day would become an ordinary ten minutes.

Change 3 (greenery): one tree per class, with a name and a keeper.

What: Every class plants and adopts one tree. A wooden board with the tree's name and the class's name goes beside it. A watering roster with children's names is pinned on the class notice board, and includes the summer holidays.
Why: Our school planted five saplings last year and two died, because planting was somebody's job and watering was nobody's.
What would change: Ten new trees a year that actually survive — and shade over the playground in ten years' time.

Why these three and not bigger ones: A principal for one day cannot build a new hall or buy computers. But a principal for one day can make a rule, mark a line on a road, and pin up a roster — and all three of those keep working long after the day is over. The best change is the smallest one that keeps working by itself.

Write your own three: choose them from what your own School Explorer Teams actually found. A change that answers a real finding from your own school is a far better answer than a general good idea.

Q7.

In groups of 4 – 5, act out the following: • A student showing kindness in a difficult situation. • A team solving a school water wastage problem. • A student helping a shy classmate feel included. After each role-play, ask the class: What did you see? What was inspiring? Could this happen in real-life?

Answer

How to prepare a role-play — 5 steps

Choose one situation. Decide the characters and who plays each. Four or five people, no more.
Plan a beginning, a middle and an end. Something must actually change by the end, or it is not a story.
Do not write out every line. Agree what happens in each scene and then speak naturally.
Speak loudly and slowly, and stand so the class can see your face.
Keep it under three minutes. Short and clear beats long and confused.

Scene A — A student showing kindness in a difficult situation

Characters: Anu, Vikram, two classmates, the teacher.

Scene 1. Vikram comes to school without his tiffin for the third day. He says he is not hungry, and goes and sits alone at the back of the class during lunch. Two children whisper about it.

Scene 2. Anu notices, but does not announce it to everybody. She goes to him with her box and says, “My mother has put four parathas today and I can never finish them. Will you help me?” They eat together. Nobody else is told.

Scene 3. Later, Anu quietly tells her class teacher, “Ma'am, Vikram has not brought lunch for three days.” The teacher finds out that his mother is unwell, and arranges for him to have the mid-day meal.

The end: the next day Vikram is eating with everyone, and no one has said anything to embarrass him.

Scene B — A team solving a school water wastage problem

Characters: four Water Watchers, the office clerk.

Scene 1. The team finds a tap dripping behind the toilet block. One of them says, “It is only a drip, leave it.” Another says, “Let us measure it.”

Scene 2. They put a glass under it and check the clock. Six minutes for one glass. On the board they work it out: 10 glasses an hour, 240 a day, 48 litres — three full buckets, every single day.

Scene 3. They write a list — four taps, with exact locations — and give it to the office. The clerk says he will look into it. Two weeks later, nothing has happened.

Scene 4. They do not give up. They put their chart on the notice board: “THIS TAP WASTES 3 BUCKETS A DAY”. The next week the plumber comes.

The end: the team checks all four taps again and ticks them off, one by one.

Scene C — A student helping a shy classmate feel included

Characters: Ravi (new, shy, speaks a different language at home), Seema, three children playing.

Scene 1. Games period. Two captains pick their teams. Ravi is picked last, and then nobody passes him the ball. He goes and stands near the wall.

Scene 2. Seema notices. She does not say “poor Ravi”. She goes over and asks, “What games do you play at home?” He says a game she has never heard of.

Scene 3. Next day Seema asks him to teach that game to the group. He explains it, slowly at first, then properly. He knows all its rules and nobody else does. Everyone plays it.

The end: at the next games period, one of the captains calls his name first.

The three questions after each play — sample answers

Question	A good answer sounds like this
What did you see?	“In Scene C, a boy was standing alone and no one passed him the ball. One girl noticed. She did not feel sorry for him — she asked him what he was good at, and then made the whole group need him.”
What was inspiring?	“That she did it quietly, without making a speech about kindness, and without embarrassing him. Also that Anu offered food by saying she had too much, so that Vikram never had to feel he was being given charity.”
Could this happen in real life?	“Yes — and it does. But we usually notice and then do nothing, because we think somebody else will. Each of these scenes needed only one person to walk across the room. Any of us can be that one person.”

Why acting it out teaches more than being told: When you play the child standing alone at the wall, you feel a little of what that is like — and you remember it. When you play the person who walks across, you have practised walking across. On the real day, your feet already know what to do.

Q8.

Write a one minute speech for your morning assembly on ‘My Dream School’. Mention what makes it special, who helps it stay that way and what every student can do.

Answer

One minute is about 130 to 150 words. Do not write more — you will run out of time and stop halfway. Keep to the three parts the question names: what makes it special, who keeps it that way, what every student can do.

Sample answer — one minute

Respected teachers and my dear friends,
Good morning to all of you.

My dream school is not a school with marble floors. It is this school, on a good day.

In my dream school no tap drips, no light burns in an empty room, and the peels from our lunch become soil for our own garden. There is a tree outside every classroom window. And no child eats lunch alone.

Who keeps it that way? Not one person. Ramesh bhaiya, who sweeps our corridor before we arrive. Kamla didi, who cooks our meal. Our teachers, who stay back to explain a sum again. And the gardener, who waters what we planted and then forgot.

What can we do? Very little things. Close the tap tight. Switch off the fan when you leave last. Use the bin. Say good morning to the people who keep our school running. And make room on your bench for whoever is standing alone.

A dream school is not built. It is behaved into being, by all of us, every day.

Thank you.

How to deliver it: Stand straight. Look up at the school, not down at your paper — so learn the first and last lines by heart. Speak slowly; nervous speakers race. Pause after “Good morning”, and pause before the last line. Practise it out loud three times with a clock, and cut whatever does not fit in a minute.

Why a speech about small things works better than a grand one: Everybody in the assembly has heard speeches about big dreams. Almost nobody has heard one that names Ramesh bhaiya and asks the school to close a tap. Naming real people and real actions is what makes a listener remember your speech at lunch time.

Q9.

Take a quick survey, ask five students and one teacher: (a) What is the one thing that makes them feel happy in school? (b) What is the one thing that could be improved? (c) What is the one kind thing that they saw today? Record and present your findings to the class. What did you learn from others?

Answer

How to do the survey properly

Make a table in your notebook with six rows and the three questions as columns.
Ask five students — and choose different kinds of people: someone from another class, someone you do not usually talk to, a junior, and a senior. Asking your five closest friends will give you five almost identical answers.
Ask one teacher too.
Ask politely, write the answer in the person's own words, and do not argue with any answer.
Say thank you. Do not write anybody's name if the answer is about something that troubles them.

Sample answer — our completed survey

Whom I asked	(a) What makes them happy	(b) What could be improved	(c) One kind thing seen today
Ayesha, Class 5	The library period on Thursday	“We need more story books in Hindi”	“Rohit shared his umbrella with me in the rain”
Deepak, Class 5	Games period and kho-kho	“The playground has stones in it; I fell last week”	“A senior helped a Class 1 boy find his water bottle”
Salma, Class 3	The mid-day meal, especially the kheer	“The tap at the drinking point is too high for us”	“Didi from Class 5 lifted me up so I could drink”
Arjun, Class 7	“My friends. I would not come otherwise”	“The toilets should be cleaned twice, not once”	“Someone returned my lost geometry box to the office”
Nisha, Class 2	Drawing period	“The big children run in the corridor and we get pushed”	“My teacher tied my shoelace”
Meena Ma'am, teacher	“When a child who was struggling suddenly understands something”	“Fewer things at once, so we can spend more time with each child”	“A boy in Class 5 quietly shared his lunch with a classmate who had none”

What I learnt from others — sample answer

Happiness in school is mostly about people and small pleasures — friends, a favourite period, kheer on Friday. Not one person said “the building”.
The younger children see completely different problems from us. Salma cannot reach the drinking tap and Nisha is afraid of the corridor at break. I have walked past both those problems every day for two years and never once noticed them, because I am tall enough and old enough.
Everybody had seen a kind thing that same day. Every single person, without having to think hard. Kindness is happening in our school all the time; we simply do not talk about it.
The teacher's answer surprised me most. She said what makes her happy is when a struggling child suddenly understands. So she notices the child who is finding it hard, more than the one who tops the class.
Two of the six problems can be fixed by us this month — clearing the stones off the playground, and a “walk, don't run” rule on the stairs and corridor with monitors from our class.

Why a survey is a better way to finish this chapter than a lesson: The whole chapter has said that a school is a happy place when it is happy for everybody. A survey is how you find out whether that is actually true in yours — by asking the people who are not you. The tap that is too high is invisible to a tall person and is a real problem for a short one. You cannot fix a school by guessing what is wrong with it. You have to ask.

Finish the job: present your findings in class, put the three or four things that came up most often on one chart, and give it to your class teacher. A survey that stays in a notebook changes nothing. A survey handed over, with a suggestion, sometimes changes a school.

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