The Primary Math Project

Three Books in the Primary Math Project

The Primary Math Project envisages 3 books. This is the first book “Understanding Primary Math”. The articles in the website make up the various chapters of this book. The next article is an introduction to this book.

The theme of the next two proposed books are tentatively named as follows.

1. Knowledge that Teachers Need for Teaching Primary Math Effectively

2. Conceptwise activities for enabling children to understand them

Instrumental Vs Relational Understanding

Richard Skemp, a mathematician-turned-psychologist, identified two different levels at which the Primary Math curriculum can be transacted. The first level (Instrumental Level) is that of “doing” math which focusses on algorithms and procedures. The second level (Relational Level) would explain the logic of & the inter-relations between the various procedures. We will explain these levels in brief in the next article.

In most schools, all over the world, math is taught mostly at the instrumental level. The current book, Understanding Primary Math, explains the math curriculum at the second (Relational) level.

Third Level of Understanding

In addition, a teacher who wants to make math learning interesting, easy and effective, needs to understand math at a third (higher) level.

For example, students make several different mistakes in solving the same problem, depending on their understanding of the procedure & underlying concepts. A teacher needs insight into the various kinds of mistakes, the conceptual & procedural weaknesses which lead students to commit these mistakes and organise different ways of remediating these lacunae in student understanding.

These aspects would be covered in Book 2 – Knowledge That Teachers need for Teaching Primary Math Effectively. Some of the aspects to be understood are given below.

1. Understanding the nature of math, the objective of learning math, seeing math as a human endeavour and the beauty of math

2. Understanding the learning psychology & developmental level of the child in primary school so that the abstract ideas can be presented to students in a manner they can understand.

3. Teaching methods & classroom processes which would enable students to learn the various aspects of math – concepts, skills & information.

4. Setting Up a Math Activity Centre & integrating it with classroom pedagogy

The third book, Book 3, “Conceptwise activities for enabling children to understand them” would provide teachers a detailed list of the concepts in primary math and activities to enable understanding of each of these concepts & procedures. Among others, it would consist of the following.

1. Topic-wise list of concepts

2. Associated snippets from the history of mathematics

3. Topic-wise list of skills

4. Activities for understanding the above concepts

5. Activities for “remembering” math vocabulary & information

6. Happy Drills for mastering skills & procedures

7. Math Lab materials for the above activities

The three books of the Primary Math Project should enable a teacher to enjoy math, convey her enjoyment of math to her students and present the material in a variety of ways suited to the needs of the students. It will enable her to become an effective teacher of math.

Math Teaching is Complex even in Primary School

Many educational administrators and principals do not seem to be aware of the complexities of teaching & learning primary math. They are of the opinion that up to Primary classes one teacher can teach all the subjects. But this is not true. Math has many sophisticated concepts that need special training for understanding& teaching. I hope these articles will establish this.

The Math Videos Project

Another project which is in the “dream stage” is producing videos to illustrate all concepts & procedures in primary math. There are many videos available on the Net for teaching math. But most of them are in the “doing level” and not at the “understanding level”. The videos of the Primary Math Project should provide an effective platform for teacher training.