School and Education of our children is something we can not run away from. Math is at the center of our education system be it in national curriculum or homeschooling.
Many children are fond of their teachers especially teachers that effectively connect with the learners. Math is a special subject in that it aims to teach learners how to solve problems. Strategy is key when it comes to math. One senior math teacher told us that learners should be allowed to use multiple approaches towards correct solutions. Teachers therefore need more patient and approaches to show learners the wonderful logic behind math through which they can use different strategies.
Learners need to have fun with math to excel. In one of our design sessions working with grade 2 children, we noticed that once learner do enough practice, they begin to appreciate different strategies. One learner after using the numberline to add two numbers, he was confident to show off that his answer was correct using ‘balls’ – that is, by drawing small balls to represent each number count and then counting all the balls. But the your learner was finding fun i drawing the numberline.
It is this confidence of using multiple tricks that allows learners to see relationships between math concepts. The numberline is perhaps an easier route to show integers, fractions and other concepts. Some teachers focus on calculations and this makes children just follow steps and procedures without deeper processing of what is going on. Learns look at mathematics as a list of operations and techniques for getting the right answer. Mathematics is much more about having rules to a game, playing it, and then seeing what happens when more elements are added to the game. It is a never ending discovery of the consequences of how the rules interact with new elements.
After working with many teachers in top schools, it is obvious that they use more than one teacher for different parts of the curriculum. They have teachers that introduce new content, teachers that focus on revision and teachers that focus on assessments. Even with this deployment of resources, schools face a challenge of 100% effectiveness of all area of math to entice learners with the unlimited beauty of math.
After a series of brainstorming with top math educators, it was conceived that
- What if we could collect all best strategies from various teachers and package them for learners and other teachers
- What if learners could be empowered with easy access to questions that are similar to what they do in classwork
- What if learners can create their own questions to check their understanding
- What if learners could see their progress at more refined level just like professional athletes?
Using technology, we have packaged the wisdom of experience and energetic teachers into boldungu, which aims to make a positive difference in the learning of mathematics. With bolddugu, every learner has a chance to access a variety of math strategies and approaches.
So interesting