Sanand Teacher Goes Innovative To Engage Kids
What if you can hum a tune to remember the qualities of acids and bases, or use a board with nails to do multiplication?
These are the tools used by students of secondary standards classes VI, VII and VIII of Chacharwadi Vasna Aadarsh Prathmik Shala near Sanand, as teacher Bansi Lakhtariya, 32, has got them hooked to mathematics and science.
“These were the main subjects where we recorded lower marks.When I thought about it, I found that it doesn’t have narrative or `story’ like in the languages or history . I then attended workshops by Vikram A Sarabhai Community Science Centre (VASCSC) and other organizations to learn new pedagogies. I decided to devise my own tools,“ says Lakhtariya, who has been teaching for seven years. She is part of the ongoing Innovation Fair at VASCSC. The experiment started with positive and negative numbers, which stumped many students. “I started teaching using red and green dots, signifying positive and negative numbers respectively . I compared each dot with a soldier and interaction between them as `battle’ to give examples.
The method worked. Next were nomograms -graphical calculating de vices -made by the students themselves,“ she says.
With the nomograms, students can multiply two numbers on first and last lines to get the answer on the middle line. She demonstrates the use of it using rubber bands.
Her most innovative method, ho wever, is writing songs using popular Gujarati and Hindi tunes to teach scientific principles. Her rendition of Vaishnav Jan goes `Acid to bhai tene re kahiye je, Swade khata lage re’ (They are acids that taste sour).
Source – Times of India – Ahmedabad – 2nd March 2017
