Gummidelli Mahender
Language is one life skill that is taught in school but there are several others that we expect children to acquire on their own as they progress in life. Why not impart these other life skills too to children in their language classrooms?
Category: Primary Pack
Training ourselves to see better
Meena Kharatmal
Science begins with observation. As Aristotle says, people value their sight among other things. The reason for this is sight makes knowledge possible for us and shows us the differences between many things. Observation therefore is a very important skill for school science learning. Here are a few simple activities which primary school teachers can conduct for their students to improve and sharpen their observation skills.
Handling the decimal dilemma
Krittika Hazra
Often, math is taught not so much to challenge and enhance a child’s thinking ability but to get them to score well in the exams. When exams are the goal, teaching takes on a different direction altogether—several concepts in mathematics become tricky and are learnt only by memory. It is, however, time to abort this practice and find ways to logically explain math concepts. Here is how you can unravel ‘decimals’.
Word problems – from foe to friend
Anjana A.R.
What is the role of language in a math class? Most children may not have any difficulty when it comes to numbers, but they begin to falter when trying to understand the words in a problem. The math teacher needs to ensure that children not only understand numbers but also the words. A math teacher thus becomes an English or language teacher to some extent. Here are some techniques to help children understand ‘word’ problems.
Playing your way into math
Suma Vivekanandan
The best way to teach math, especially at the primary level, is through games. Teach place value, addition/subtraction and estimation through these games.
Sensing a story
Nabanita Deshmukh
Storytelling is a popular teaching aid in the primary classes. Sensory storytelling is a technique that is fast gaining popularity as it allows its listeners to experience a story through their senses and thereby giving them more learning opportunities. Here is how you tell a sensory story.
Gaming math on the board!
Sandeep Yadav, Anveshna Srivastava and Koumudi Patil
The fact that math is a hard subject and difficult to learn is known and educators are doing their bit to make math fun. Here is a board game that connects both fun and basic math learning. The conceptual theme is around area-perimeter.
Dismantling colourism in kindergarten
Sangeeta Zombade and Priyanka Shrivastav
Dark skin has been a matter of ridicule for a long time. Be it home and neighbourhood or media and public spaces, young people are bombarded with messages that put darker shades of skin down and equate being fair to higher standards of beauty. This, in turn, is often used to bully and put people down. Read how some children and their facilitators helped process some of these messages and beliefs underlying them.
Colour by numbers…with a twist!
Kavitha Madhuri Reddy
When the numbers are small, you know which number can be divided with which other number but as the numbers get bigger you need to the ‘divisibility rules’ to easily identify which numbers you can use to divide the bigger numbers. One way of learning these rules is to byheart them, another way is to understand them by observing number patterns.
Making sound sense
Ranjeeta Prajapati
If there is a subject other than math that instills fear among students it is English. But like with math, if English is taught the way it should be then there is no need to be afraid.