Mathematics Experiments with 7th Grade Students

The lack of a good education ( sometimes, misunderstanding  or partial understanding of concepts)  is one of the biggest issue across the globe.  Having an educational infrastructure (i.e. schools) is only half the battle. Teacher training is crucial and often the missing element. In order to get a good education children need to have teaching methods which motivate and offer them freedom to learn while in school, and this is where the “chalk and talk” teaching fails.

“Chalk & Talk” is a formal method of teaching with a blackboard and the teacher’s voice as its focal point. This method is used in classrooms across the world. However, this formal and somewhat unimaginative teaching method has come under scrutiny, with many people suggesting that teachers should not rely solely on this technique if they want to engage and inspire their students. Another criticism is that this method of teaching tends to go with the pace of the fastest learner and can leave a lot of children behind. That is, this “Chalk & Talk” method fails to stimulate all the students’ interests in learning. Education needs to be more practical, should allow children to express themselves and learn independently at their own.

So we decided to handle the mathematics class with some programming tool like GeoGebra  ( used to do Geometry) and Sratch ( Syntax free programming). At my first class with 7th graders, i started with GeoGebra. Because, most of the students follow only the procedure not the concepts behind the procedure.

During that period, they learnt about how to draw Equilateral Triangle & Isosceles triangle in GeoGebra (under some different kinds of condition) and their properties. (Here, i enclosed some pictures of my students’ work in Geometry).

      This practice made the students to do their text book exercises by their own. Of course, I guess, it took me comparatively more time than “Chalk & Talk” method.

But It doesn’t matter when the students reproduced the things by their understanding.