After our recent Math4ALL successful Workshop at Bendapudi, we selected Mayaram Surjan Higher Secondary School, Raipur for our next workshop since team {igebra.ai} is already there in Raipur to partner with N.H. Goel World School to set up on premises MathLab.
Math4ALL program is focused on making math inclusive and to Make Kids Fall in Love with Math. We strongly believe that every kid should get a chance of learning and mastering math because it builds foundation for logical and analytical skills. Conducting Math4ALL Workshop is an effort by {igebra.ai} to address the need for math education in government schools. We want to offer hope and opportunity to children in government schools to excel in math as well as future career growth.
With the help of our local Math Educator Jai Kumar Relwarni, we approached the Block Education Officer and explained to him our mission. He was quite impressed and appreciated our initiative and asked for a workshop the next day. He supported us with an introduction to Mayaram Surjan Higher Secondary School, Raipur faculty so that we could collaborate with them and execute the workshop as soon as possible.
The next day our team members Chiranjeevi Maddala, Venkat Muramalla, Pradhyumna Kumar, Jai Kumar Relwarni and Sheetal Singh arrived at the school by 9 am to conduct the Math4ALL workshop. We first met the school headmaster. The Headmaster had shared with us her challenges and we got to know about the problems that she faces in managing the school like shortages in learning resources, lack of facilities, and she also mentioned that there were not enough teachers to teach students and many students had dropped out due to their own financial and personal problems.
The Headmaster’s frame of mind was hopeful as she has been trying her best to improve the educational system at school. We left the Headmaster’s cabin feeling inspired by how she manages this challenging environment at school. We are sure that this knowledge will help us in devising an effective strategy for our Math4ALL project.
After the meeting, the team headed towards the training room where the workshop will be conducted. The students of grade 8 assembled in the training room and welcomed us with warm greetings. We saw they had a lot of excitement and curiosity shining in their eyes. They were eager to see and learn what we were going to teach them that day. After ten minutes of causal interaction, we started with the workshop.
The first topic that we showcased was how they can build multiplication tables till 99 by simply understanding the underlying logic. Pradyumna, our math educator, started by explaining the easy methods to build multiplication tables. He started with the 2nd table and showed them a way to build it faster with a pattern. Though everyone knew the table of 2, it created a different kind of experience for the kids. The students liked it so much and they wanted to carry on to table 3.
Seeing the curiosity in students, our hearts were full. Pradyumna then proceeded with table of 3 which was a slightly different pattern. The students made good observations about the pattern and were keenly looking forward to table 4. After the 3rd table, Pradhyumna made the students learn the 4th table with a different pattern. It went up to the 8 table and table of 9 was a hot favorite for all the students.
When Pradhyumna taught them the method to build the table of 29, the whole class was surprised that it was actually so easy! They thought it would be very hard to build the 29nd table so they were very happy when they found out that actually, it wasn’t hard at all! As we couldn’t spend more than 1 hour with 8 graders, we could only deliver multiplication tables!
After an amazing session with 8th graders, we spent another hour with 6th and 7th graders and we repeated the same magic with them.
The session went well. In these Math4aLL workshops, we don’t use any textbook or handouts but instead demonstrate the effect of our teaching by letting the students experience it.
All the students loved our session and asked us to come back again! The students were not just sitting, they were engaged in the topic, they were helping each other in understanding and also were asking interesting questions. It’s great how these workshops help students cultivate their interest in math!
