Category: May-June 2020

The role of technology in math education

Kannan Bharadwaj
Technology should no longer be an occasional aid in the teaching of mathematics. Teachers should by now realize that it is a tool that they can and should be using every day. During teacher training and professional development courses, teachers should be trained in the ‘how’ of using technology to teach math and made aware of subject specific software as well.

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Developing knowticing among mathematics teachers

Shikha Takker
Asking questions is the best way for students to learn and when teachers ignore these questions, students stop learning. By not acknowledging and stopping to answer students’ questions, often teachers lose precious opportunities to teach, clarify and help students understand. Teachers always have to be alert and grab these opportunities in the classroom.

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The joys of solving problems

Shailesh Shirali
The study of math instills in you one very important life skill – that of problem solving. Of course this is not a skill that you develop solving the routine “word problems” given in textbooks. As a responsible teacher, foster a culture of solving non-routine problems in the classroom and challenge your students to find not one but many ways to solve a problem.

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Abstract to concrete – biology to the aid of mathematics

Geetha Iyer
Rational functions: Calculations of Body Mass Index – BMI is weight in kilograms divided by height in metres squared. You can play with data here. For e.g., you can ask to calculate the maximum height a person considered obese will reach (given the weight of the obese person).

With advances in every field, the world is becoming more and more seamless. Knowledge of one subject is helping people unravel mysteries in another subject. Schools should adapt to this new emerging society and teach subjects not in isolation but see how one subject can ease the understanding of another. Here is an example of how the knowledge of biology can help in understanding math and vice-versa to prove the case in point.

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Hands on paper, hands-on geometry!

Roopika Sood
This is the story of how a tinker shed, a maker space in a school transformed into a math laboratory as children discovered the world of geometry while learning to make origami models. Is there a lesson in this for math teachers everywhere?

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Pallankuzhi – a school math project

Jayasree S and R. Ramanujam
Can board games enhance the mathematization abilities in children? With proper guidance from the teacher, they most certainly can. Teachers have to be careful in choosing the board games and they should be able to provide the right kind of impetus to allow mathematical explorations by the children even as they are playing the game. Read on to find out how an ancient game of strategy – pallankuzhi – threw up a few opportunities to mathematize.

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What does mathematics have to do with social justice?

Chintan Girish Modi
In a world that is experiencing suffering, poverty, hunger and unemployment like never before, it is important for us to train our students to employ their knowledge of various subjects to try and alleviate the world’s problems. So how can you teach math through the lens of social justice? Here are a few ideas and pointers to help you to start planning your math lessons accordingly.

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Reinventing math

S Sundaram It was in early January that Teacher Plus asked me if I would be interested in guest-editing a special issue on math to be published in June 2020. I said yes immediately almost without thinking. Only a few hours later did I realize the enormity of the task I had committed to! But a discussion with a few close professional friends and a review of the previous math special issue (published in June 2009), enabled me to draft a road map, draw up a list of topics and possible writers. The main focus was to be on the improvement of the quality and enrichment of math instruction in our schools. After reviewing all the articles we received, we decided to group them under three broad sections. “Policy and Perspectives”. In today’s globalized world, our students compete with the rest of the world and one of the crucial determinants of their success will be their competency in math. There is a need to compare our curriculum and performance globally. It is an accepted fact that the quality of math teaching and learning in India needs a lot of improvement. The national education policy, covering among other things, curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and teacher education, is one of the major instruments that can lead to the much needed improvement. Therefore, there is a need to critique the policy and its implementation. “Pedagogy” which explores various issues related to teaching and learning of math in our schools. It points out aspects of math which have not been fully exploited by the curriculum. Math has acquired a “not-so-deserved” reputation of being a boring and difficult subject. However, the study of math has also given rise to a lot of puzzles, games and pastimes. Math improves deep thinking and deep thinking is pleasurable. Math provides for edutainment! One article even questions if math has been given too much importance in our schools! Finally we have “Practice”. In spite of the bleak landscape at a pan-India level, a number of teachers, educators and schools are making efforts to provide students with rich learning experiences. Many of these efforts are also aimed towards students with disabilities of various kinds. Their motto, “think globally but act locally” needs wider acknowledgement and encouragement. The range of the writers is varied – from teachers, principals, teacher educators and researchers to amateur enthusiasts! Age seems to be no bar to enjoying math, two of our oldest contributors being in their 80s! There is even distribution

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Folk mathematics

S N Gananath
The beauty of math lies in the variety of methods one can employ to teach it. If you are a creative and passionate teacher, you would have realized the potential of folk puzzles to teach several aspects of mathematics – problem solving, spatial thinking, computation, pattern identification to name just a few.

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Can we use our participation in PISA to improve our maths learning levels?

Sridhar Rajagopalan and Nishchal Shukla
Only once has India ever participated in a PISA test and so badly did we perform that it has taken us more than a decade to muster the courage to participate again in 2021. Even locally designed tests like ASSET and ASER have time and again shown the dismal standards of the Indian education system. While these assessment tools show us how terrible things are, can we also use these same tools to learn how to right the wrongs?

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