The Hindu : New Delhi News : Now mathematics minus fear

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jan 22, 2006

New Delhi

New Delhi

Now mathematics minus fear

Lakshmi B. Ghosh

Seminar to make the subject interesting

NEW DELHI: This is one seminar that promises to "add" fun to calculation, subtract fear from the mind of the students, and multiply your little one's interest in Mathematics.

Helping primary teachers make the teaching of Mathematics more activity-based will be a three-day workshop and seminar here in the Capital this coming week. Being organised at the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) by NGO Jodo Gyan, the event will also feature a special exhibition on "Maths lab -- how and why''. The seminar-cum-workshop - "Making mathematics with children'' -- will see the focus shift to primary education, and more specifically the teaching of mathematics.

Aimed at introducing innovative methods of teaching to make children understand and enjoy the process of learning, the NGO works on the belief that mathematics is something tangible and must be connected to reality. Schools can do so by keeping the study close to a child's experience so that mathematics lessons give students the guided opportunity to re-invent mathematics by doing it, feels the organisation.

To be inaugurated by the veteran educationist and scientist Prof. Yashpal, who will speak on putting the national curriculum framework into practice, the seminar is expected to be attended by nearly 1,000 teachers and 70 principals.

The second day of the event will see a workshop on realistic mathematics education for students of pre-primary to Class V, while the last day will see the workshop focus on realistic mathematics education with a parallel workshop on number sense and place value.

Working with as many as 30 schools, the NGO conducts short-term and long-term workshops for schools and helps them set up a maths lab. "The whole idea of the seminar is to tell teachers how to be the teaching link and make the experience of doing maths more enjoyable. Children work well when they are shown examples that they can relate to as the subject should be meaningful for them,'' says a Jodo Gyan representative.

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