The Students Channel Their Inner Bhaskaracharya In Geometry Class!

The Student Collective sessions have been picking up a lot of steam in the Upper Primary School No 3 in Khekra. From creating their own class timetable to arranging stage performances on their own, the students are slowly, but steadily, taking charge of their own education.

Apart from these engaging activities, we, at Tarkeybein, are looking to work with the students to strengthen their learning outcomes for all subjects. We are also working towards helping the children explore their interests in higher education.

We believe these two things are extremely important. One helps in developing their academic capability and strengthen their skills, while the other pushes them to design their own life path as they explore the world of endless possibilities.

Widening Horizons For Our Champs

In order to strengthen the students’ learning outcomes, we have put forth various interesting and engaging means for the students to proactively explore various career possibilities. Apart from providing access to the Know Your Star Book of Possibilities, video-based learnings are being encouraged in the classroom, where the students can come to their own conclusions about topics that interest them.

Most video screenings are followed up by sessions where we ask questions that encourage students to think for themselves and express their desires with confidence. These sessions help students to sharpen their imagination and widen their perspective about the different professions around us.

Tackling Geometry The Ancient Way!

In one of the recent classes, the topic of learning was geometry. Jaideep Rao, our CEO, had an interesting idea to engage the students — storytelling in Mathematics class! The story he shared was about the very famous mathematician, Bhaskaracharya, who wrote a book based on his conversation with Leelavati, his daughter, around the 12th century. This ancient story was still relevant and became a perfect example to deploy and teach algebra in the classroom.

The story goes somewhat like this -

Bhaskaracharya describes a problem where he is walking by the lakeside. He sees a beautiful lotus plant and gets enchanted by it. While he appreciates its immense beauty and color, the wind suddenly withers the plant and it falls on the ground. After seeing this, he turns to his daughter to pose this question — “Leelavati, can you calculate how tall the lotus plant is?”

Storytelling Of A Math Problem!

By the time Jaideep finished sharing this story with all its vivid details about nature, there was pin-drop silence in the classroom; proof of how engrossed the students were!

The students took out their notebook, started drawing the scenario and contemplating the part of the plant that must have been under and above water. They also started calculating the direction and distance of the fallen plant.

We were thrilled that what we were witnessing was learning outcomes being realized right in front of our eyes. Instead of just knowing the formulas, and blindly using corresponding values to get the answer, the students were independently learning the application of the formulas through practical examples.

The Joy Of An Enriching Classroom

In about 20–25 minutes into the discussion, one of the students even ended up cracking an important bit of the problem. He imagined the whole plant as one and not half which has fallen. Using his imagination, he also understood that the hypotenuse was itself the whole length of the fallen plant!

Seeing the way in which the student solved the problem by himself was amazing for us at Tarkeybein to witness. We realized that there is no pressure to create new content to teach.

There is so much content that has been generated since time immemorial, which is relevant even today. The teachers know best how to utilize them and make them resourceful and relevant to the children of today!

Not only did the storytelling make the geometry class really interesting, but it also lay down the fact that mathematics is a whole lot of application of understanding and there is nothing to fear in it! The students enjoyed the class with complete involvement and by the end of the class, there was the joy of understanding on most of their faces, including ours!

If you resonate with our work, want to implement this model in your community, want to support this initiative, or just want to drop in some encouraging words, we invite you to write to us at tarkeybein@gmail.com :)