An Observation of a Maths Class

I am going to share my observations of a Math Class which I supervised  last year. This will throw light on how this subject is being taught  by and large in our schools.

As I entered Class VIII A , all students appeared to be meaningfully engaged and  were busy in the construction of a quadrilateral. There was pin drop silence. My entry created disturbance to their work. Teacher was also busy in the -construction of a quadrilateral on black board  with the help of a compass, scale and chalk.

I adjusted myself on a vacant desk in the end of a row and picked up the text book of a student who was sitting next to me. While the whole class was busy in the construction of a quadrilateral mentioned in the Exercise 4.1, I was busy in the reading of Introduction of Chapter 4 : Practical Geometry.

In  the   Introduction was an activity under the heading Do THIS. All students were supposed to do that activity. Or at least the teacher would have demonstrated that. Or would have at least asked the class to read   that.  After reading the introduction of this chapter my own concept of  quadrilateral got polished. I stood up from the last desk and moved towards the blackboard.

 I wrote the word: Hinge on the blackboard which I had picked up from  DO THIS Activity. Then I asked the class about its meaning. To my surprise none could answer. Then I  wrote  another  word :Altered and asked the  meaning. Again there was no response.

Then I asked the Class to read the text of DO THIS Activity silently. I gave them 5 minutes to read that. Thereafter I asked them to close the books and asked them a couple of questions which were partially answered. Then I asked them if they found some other difficult words in the Introduction. To my surprise they told me the words like: uniquely,  determine, obtain …………

I want each one of you to read DO THIS Activity which  has  been extracted from the Maths Text Book.

Had the teacher involved the class in doing the above activity, students would have understood the concept of a quadrilateral permanently? By ignoring such activities in the classrooms, teachers mess up the process of learning. Let’s not do that. Let all the activities  mentioned in the text books of Maths ,Science and Social  Science be performed in the classrooms. For this, teachers need to draw on the resources well in advance. Students need to do the activities with their own hands. They also need to keenly watch the demonstrations given by teachers. This will reinforce the learning.

 Focus has to be kept by the teacher on the teaching the concepts and their application.

A Mathematics teacher also has to teach English at certain occasions and vice versa!

The understanding of concepts should not be kidnapped by the process of solving sums of Exercises with the main motive to cover the mandated syllabus .