Math Space focuses on making math meaningful. 

We work with teachers, teacher educators and anyone who is helping teachers. We help parents and try to work with children as much as possible.  

We try to address both ends of the spectrum and anyone in between - 

1. the math-phobic - who fear and possibly hate the subject - Don't worry! We have antidote 

2. the math-philic - who love it - We hope to provide you with some food for thought  

We explore materials developed by others, often find more ways to use these and create our own. In particular, we make and distribute low-cost no-cost math kits for (i) numbers - whole numbers, fractions and integers, (ii) algebra and (iii) geometry and mensuration. We also have a low-cost rangometry (a collection of triangles, rectangles (including squares) and circles), and are working on few more ideas. We share the 'How to make' part of our kits in the Mat(h)erial section, while the 'How to use' is spread across various content sectors.

At present, we are addressing primary (Class 1-5), middle school (Class 6-8) and secondary (Class 9-10). We have some resources for higher secondary (Class 11-12), and have expanded to preprimary. 

You can reach us at mathspace@apu.edu.in. Your queries help us grow!   

What do you see? A heart? A butterfly? An isometric sketch of a set of cubes? All of these encompass what Math Space is…and how it came to be

Heart → For the love of mathematics

Butterfly → For the transformation from math-phobia towards math-philia

Cubes → For the perspectives it provides

All of these constructed on the isometric grid and inspired by the hexagonal structure of a hive – a very active space, abuzz with ideas and projects

Thank you Shailaja and Veda for the idea and the execution! 

Math Space was seeded by a cupboard full of mat(h)erials (Teaching Learning Materials for math = mat(h)erials) and started its journey in 2014 in one of the smallest rooms in the earlier campus of Azim Premji University. In 2 years, we shifted to one of the largest rooms which we shared with the science department. We shifted to our current location at the Bengaluru campus of the university in 2021 and will be relocating to what is hopefully our permanent home in the upcoming Campus Commons by the end of 2025. Since June2022, this site has been active.

Math Space is one of the two mathematics laboratories at the university and caters to all four stages – foundational, preparatory, middle and secondary of the 15 years of school mathematics. Our vision is to make mathematics meaningful for all. So, we explore ways of representing concepts and then play deeply with the representations developing visuals, models and manipulatives. And we try to make them low-cost with things that can be found locally and are usually thrown away. We have developed and produced several kits including (i) Numbers – whole numbers and decimals, fractions, integers and exponents; (ii) Algebra; (iii) Geometry and Mensuration (GM) as well as some specific manipulatives like polyominoes and tangrams. We ensure that each mat(h)erial is packed suitably and create the packaging ourselves.

We are inspired by many including Maria Montessori who stressed on the importance and affordances of tactile representations, P K Srinivasan who focused on the possibility of finding a way for every learner, Samar Bagchi – for low-cost no-cost materials and enriched by Prof. Rohit Dhankar, Digantar, for nudging us to go beyond the concrete. Some of the materials of Jodo Gyan (Ganitmala for example) and Padmapriya Shirali’s Pullouts in At Right Angles have given us much food for thought.

We have grown significantly thanks to 8+ iterations of the elective Curricular Material Development – Mathematics (CMD-Math) of MA Education, 6+ years of engagement in Mathematics Co-Development, an internal platform of Azim Premji Foundation and 3 series of workshops for primary, upper primary and secondary math teachers over 3 years 2015-2018. Our BSc-BEd math students are provided with all the necessary kits before they experience teaching in actual classrooms. Student interns have been employed at Math Space for the last 8 years to make mat(h)erials. The BEd students who work with us also get to mentor others and take leadership roles. We are working closely with all 9 Azim Premji Schools across 4 states – Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand.

For the last 2 summers, we have researched and developed (i) low-cost Montessori mat(h)erials and (ii) tactile mat(h)erials for visually impaired learners.