How I Relearnt Primary School Math

PKS - My Teacher & Mentor

Insert Picture of PKS

I started relearning primary school level Math at the age of 42 from the Late Shri P K Srinivasan. It happened when I was the Bursar of Rishi Valley School and he was visiting the school regularly to conduct Math workshops for teachers. I had always been good at Math. But PKS made me realise that while I was good at "doing" Math there were a lot of Math concepts which I had not "understood".

My association with PKS continued for more than 15 years. The 5 years that I spent in Chennai as Principal of SRF Vidyalaya was a period of intense internship with almost daily contact with him.

Effective Teaching of Math

It was PKS who made me understand what "understanding" math was. Association with him helped me contrast & thus to understand the nature of other subjects like Languages, Science & Social Studies and why each of them needs to be taught differently.

In brief, "doing" math was the ability to use properties of numbers & various operations to "solve" math problems. "Understanding" math was the conceptual ability to see how numbers and operations are related and extend the scope of these numbers, operations & shapes.

Understanding math also helps a teacher to analyse and understand the "nature" of the difficulty a student faces. It helps the teacher to come up with suitable examples, so as to "reach" a child.

Math is highly conceptual. Concepts have to be "caught". They cannot be "taught". Children in primary school cannot understand abstractions easily. One way is that they have to experience certain daily events for many years and internalize related concepts. The way in which a child understands the difficult concept of a family is an example.

Another way is to mirror the concepts to children through concrete materials or role play, so that they can store them as visual images. Understanding place value with bundles & sticks is an example.

Even skills in math are based on a conceptual understanding of why the procedures work. Skills have to be practiced with understanding so that fluency is achieved. Fluency is not merely speed & accuracy. It is also about flexibility. Most teachers believe in "drilling" to practice procedures. PKS used to say that "drilling" without "understanding" will only produce "holes of misunderstanding"!

Activities with materials has to be a regular part of math pedagogy. Assessments have to use both verbal & practical methods along with paper & pencil methods. Timed-tests are not appropriate in primary school. Math facts like multiplication tables need to be "remembered by repeated use". In math there is no need for rote memorization.

Critical & logical thinking can be developed by understanding the development of the various concepts, through the entire curriculum. It can also be developed through math explorations & non-routine problem solving. Discussion & consultations need to be part of the classroom processes. Every student should maintain a "doubts" notebook. Math exhibitions should be of the "do and demonstrate" type and not "show and tell".

A Life-long Pursuit of Math Learning

PKS created in me a passion for understanding primary math. With his initial push, I have continued my efforts to understand math by reading a lot of articles & books which are available easily online.

I also started conducting Primary Math workshops for teachers in a few regular schools and in "non-formal" schools. Conducting these "Understanding Primary Math for Effective Teaching" workshops, trying to explain the nature of Math and how it can be taught effectively and answering the questions posed by the participants, continuously deepened my own understanding.

I am also indebted to many Math teachers in my schools with whom I worked closely. I learnt a lot from their classroom experiences when they tried out many of my ideas and discussed with me their successes as well as issues faced by them.

With these understandings, I attempted to change the way Math and other subjects were taught in the schools that I worked in. The success of this approach in the Reliance School at Jamnagar has been documented by IIMA as a case study of "deep academic change".

In the last 10 years, I have worked with a group of special education teachers educating students with dyslexia. We have developed many materials, processes & worksheets. The students who used to hate math now enjoy attending 3 hour weekly math sessions!