Introduction to Counting
Children’s understanding of numbers begins naturally as they explore the world around them—even in infancy. Through repeated interactions with objects and the language used in their environment, they gradually build early number concepts.
Teaching Thinking Skills
Practically every human activity involves usage of thinking skills. What are thinking skills? They are essentially mental processes that we do: classifying objects, observing properties, encoding information, comparing, taking decisions, making inferences and solving problems. Thinking skills can be viewed as the building blocks of the whole canvas of thinking. These thinking skills are broadly classified into two categories: lower order thinking skills and higher order thinking skills.
Teaching Geometry-II
many ways, the teaching of geometry when approached in the right way holds an immense potential for learning the art of seeing and observing. As one begins to play around either with a plain square paper by folding it in different ways or connecting dots in a dot paper one begins to see a variety of shapes emerge. Personally I have always found it to be a pleasurable and enriching experience as every student that I meet sees and notices shapes in his or her own special way.
Teaching Geometry
Prior to entering formal school, a child in her interaction with the environment and natural surroundings encounters different forms and shapes (2-D and 3-D). She has absorbed the perceptions that every object has a form with recognizable features which can be observed, identified, named, described and categorized. She has already experienced numerous examples of these forms.
Teaching Time
Time is one concept that is used by human beings on a daily basis, and perhaps in an instinctive way by animals and plant life too! The cock knows when to go ‘cock-a doodle doo’. Flowers know when to open their petals. Trees know when to shed their leaves.
Teaching Measurement
Measurement occupies a unique position in the curriculum, for various reasons. As it is an essential everyday activity in human life, children are naturally exposed to measurement in various situations at home and elsewhere.
Teaching Area and perimeter
Area and perimeter are forms of measurement that are used commonly in many day-to-day activities. In particular, area is used in an intuitive way on an everyday basis when we select a plate to cover a utensil, a table cloth for a specific table, a sheet of paper to cover a book, etc. Without really knowing the specific words, children also commonly make judgements which involve an intuitive understanding of area. A question that naturally arises is: When or why do we want to know the exact size of a space? Demonstration of this point needs to happen repeatedly through real world applications.
Weaving in Mathematics
In January 2025, two editors of At Right Angles made a visit to the District Institutes of the Azim Premji Foundation at Bhopal and Damoh. As part of this visit, they spent time at some of the schools that the Resource Persons of the Foundation interact with. This Pullout is a follow up of the observations made by Padmapriya Shirali who was part of this expedition.
Activities that celebrate mathematics
In the Features section of this issue, we have looked at the Why and How of the celebration of a Mathematics Day.
Teaching Word Problems
Word problems become a stumbling block for many children, including those who are adept at operational and procedural skills. Many children develop an approach to tackling word problems based on looking for cue words – such as altogether, difference, sum and so on; but this has a very limited value. Too often, such children resort to guesswork while figuring out an operation. These children experience significantly greater math anxiety when they are confronted by word problems. Why is this?
Patterns and Pre-Algebra
Mathematics is the study of patterns – in numbers and in geometry, more commonly – but also in the most unexpected places. Patterns are beautiful and catch our attention. All of us notice them either in our surroundings, in clothes, in constructions, and so on.
Money
Most children witness the usage of money during purchase transactions at grocery stores or vegetable vendor shops. While the usage of digital payments has increased across the country and in all types of transactions, currency (coins and notes) is still used for various payments such as services offered by maids, cobblers, pavement purchases, vending machines, etc. Also, older people continue to be more comfortable with money transactions.
