Need of the hour -44
Secondary strategies for math
-J.P.Bharathi
Secondary level math’s has to be taken up little interestingly. All depends on how the teacher involves and tells the student what is math’s all about.
Now proceeding to teach mathematical concepts, in the secondary level, Firstly, let us understand the theory of a glass half full or half empty.
Also we should allow the child to do his little shopping where he can learn addition, subtraction at the first stage. When the child is learning the maths through shopping or going to a nearby market, he should be allowed to do little mistakes. He cannot be confused by calling him a fool or stupid. Instead, we can teach him by saying that he had a loss of Rs.10 and the shop keeper had a gain of Rs.10. Now this gives a way for him to understand what profit and loss is.
When a student understands few things in math’s and not everything, he attempts to solve a problem. It’s not the teacher but the student himself loses his confidence as he could not successfully complete the sum. Now instead of telling the child he did not understand the concept, we can clarify with him that he understood up to a certain level. It is the duty of the teacher to guide him through the next half of the problem.
In this stage we also need to break the mindset that in math’s subject one needs to achieve 100/100. Instead we need to convince that one knows 60/100 and the rest left to learn is only 40/100. Slowly split this 40 into four portions and make the child realize it is easy to achieve more marks in maths. Even if it does not happen, we should allow a student to gain confidence knowing 70% or 60% math’s is equally good.
Especially in the secondary level, a teacher should never start a new concept altogether with a new theory. We should introduce every new concept with the old and familiar concept, where the confidence of the student increases. In short, the teacher has to move from known to unknown and not from unknown to known.
Slowly adopting an interesting methodology, a student should be taught, algebra, geometry, cost concepts, time concepts, and so on.
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