Cultivating Confident Problem-Solvers

Valmikivanam is a satellite school with more children in the classrooms than Sundaravanam. There is also a nursery section in the school. The children in the primary section are seated in groups around tables. As we enter to observe math learning in progress, one is struck by the complete focus of the young learners on their work. Of course, our entry does create a small ripple of excitement but they get back almost immediately to their work. At the head of one table is a young girl wearing a cardboard crown with a crow symbol. ( I learn that she is like the assistant teacher for the day as she has reached/crossed a specific benchmark of learning in the MGML ladder.) One student at the same table is working with another child to solve a set of math problems on a card. They take turns in rolling a large dice to decide the number of the question that either she or he will answer. The answers are provided inside little, cloud shaped patterns and covers 3/4ths of the colourful work card with questions/problems at the bottom of the page. An interesting inversion: The challenge is to match the answers to the questions at the bottom of the page!

Items such as seeds, rubber rings, small stones, pieces of string etc. are part of learning kits. Little trays comprising various items of familiar, everyday use are used interestingly to learn concepts relating to addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, factorization and so on.

At the end of the class, the students gather outside for a demo class (a whole group/class activity) introducing the concept of addition and the idea of the 'zero'. This part, the whole class activity, generally happens before the learning of the abstract and using the abstract concept begins.  The method of teaching is through a story that is enacted by a few children as the teacher begins to narrate the story. Here for example is a whole group/class activity.  (I will upload better pictures or a video later.)