Documenting My Understanding of Primary Math

Learning Through Teaching

I have conducted more than 50 teacher workshops in many parts of India on the theme "Understanding Primary Math for Effective Teaching". The premise is that a teacher who understands the different concepts and the inter-relations between them would be able to present them to students in a variety of ways suitable to the student.

After almost every workshop, many teachers used to request me for references to books in which the ideas, I talked about, were available. Since my ideas were mostly those of PKS, honed by my extensive reading of books from libraries and the Net, I was unable to suggest any single book which covered most of these ideas and approaches. That was the trigger for me to think about documenting the understanding through a series of articles.

Documenting My Understandings

Until October 2013, my responsibilities as a principal never allowed me enough time to put down my ideas on paper. It is only after my retirement, in November 2013, that I have found the time to put down my understandings about K-8 math, in a series of articles.

The articles are meant for teachers & lovers of math. They would explain the concepts in Primary School Math and show how these can be taught to children in a manner they will both enjoy and find it easy to understand.

They would also give some history of the development of certain concepts so that children can realise that some of the concepts that they learn in few periods, took several centuries for the best minds to develop. Students need to realise that it is ok if they take some time to understand these concepts. With sufficient focus and effort, any of these concepts can be understood.

Many of these articles have been read by a few teachers with whom I have worked in my career as a principal. They have provided me with valuable inputs in terms of clarity of exposition of the concepts and the simplicity of the language.

During this time, I visited my daughters who stay in the US, a few times. I found the public libraries in the US to be excellent for reading a wide range of books on the subject of math, with emphasis on primary (K-8) math. The librarians were very professional and helpful. If a particular book was not available in that library, they even got the books on loan from other libraries, both public and those in the nearby universities!

The broad theme of these articles is "Understanding Primary Math for Effective Teaching". The articles themselves form the latter sections of this book.

Loading the Articles on the Web

Around 2021, I completed the first draft of these articles. I also realised that there is no demand for such a book from the Indian school system and discussed with many friends, ways of reaching this material to interested persons.

Sridhar Rajagopalan of Educational Initiatives (EI) offered to create a website and upload the articles on to it. By end of 2021 the work was completed. I am eternally thankful to him for the enormous work that he has done.

The website also gave me an opportunity to continuously edit, correct and add relevant information to the articles directly on. The original list of 280 articles, has now increased to almost 400.

The Primary Math Project

While writing these articles, I also realized that the intention of these articles could logically be extended into what can be called “The Primary Math Project”. The details of this project are given in the next chapter.