All teachers not alike, some use egg crates to teach Math

Interactive teaching modules could soon be an integral part of Delhi schools, rather than the conventional chalk and board teaching method.

For 22-year-old Devanik Saha, a teacher in an MCD school in Mehrauli, innovation is essential for enhancing learning among children.

Instead of following the traditional way, Saha prefers to teach Math with the help of egg crates and beans. “If children need to practice continuous addition like adding 3+3+3+3, they place three beans on each compartment of the egg crate. This helps them understand numbering, division and addition at the same time,” he said.

“I believe in reusing available and discarded material for motivating children to learn,” he added.

Saha is among 25 teachers and principals being picked now by STIR (schools and teachers innovating for results) Education, an NGO, to promote innovative learning that could improve literacy and numeracy across Delhi schools. The selected teachers will share their innovative practices with others in a pilot project.

The project will continue till March next year and the findings will be submitted to the government as recommendations which can help motivate teachers across government schools.  Geeta, another teacher from Deepalaya School, has started an interactive way of teaching Mathematics and Statistics.

“I send my students out in the local community, to help them understand statistics, profit and loss. Children go out in groups to collect information from shopkeepers and return to the class for calculations,” she said. “The application takes place in formulas like mean, mode and medium. The best part is that even weak students excel and learn faster through this method,” she added.

Other methods include using a weekly calendar on which children can mark their own attendance by colouring in green if present, yellow if late and red if absent, and using newspapers as chart paper to highlight important words and to understand division and fractions.

STIR’s Delhi director Siddharth Singh believes that since these ideas are low-cost and are being implemented successfully it will not be difficult for other teachers to adopt similar techniques.

“We have seen several interesting examples of how teachers are innovating. We have selected 18 teachers and 22 ideas so far,” he said.