In the twenty-first century, schools focus on nurturing every child to reach his or her own full potential. Teachers are expected to develop students’ skills to prepare them as successful lifelong learners. In response to the ongoing global educational reforms, teachers in schools need to teach mathematics not just as one of the major subjects but as a tool to develop thinking skills of students by engaging them through meaningful activities. Activity -based learning has also been advocated as it is student- centred and promotes active participation of students in the learning process.
This online course aims to help teachers to acquire the expertise to enhance the quality of mathematics teaching, to make mathematics learning more meaningful and experiential. Students need to be equipped with the ability to apply the acquired mathematical knowledge in novel conditions as everyday life situations are increasingly mathematical such as making the right decisions in our purchasing options, mobile plans, investments etc.
Experiential Math Solutions is an educational consulting company with the intention of providing training workshops mostly online and on request at various physical sites, for mathematics teachers with instructional materials which can be implemented with ease and confidence in their classrooms.
Experiential Math Solutions aims to help teachers to develop their students’ confidence in learning mathematics, to make their students value and enjoy learning mathematics, to assist students to pursue different approaches to solve problems, to think and reason logically while solving problems and most importantly to acquire the skills to apply the mathematical knowledge in real life situations.
The primary aim of the Experiential Math Solutions is to enable the teachers to design and pose mathematical problem solving questions in their classroom teaching. According to the Singapore Mathematics Curriculum framework, it is expected that students, with the help of problem solving skills can use their mathematical knowledge and skills in novel and real life situations.
Experiential Math Content Creator certification, the first online course by Experiential Math Solutions offers five modules which can be studied at your own pace and at a convenient place. The lessons start from the basic level so that every participant can understand and practise what he or she has learnt. Hands on practices are included at an appropriate level. Participants are encouraged to discuss on a forum, submit their work online and comment on others’ works as creation and evaluation form higher level of Bloom’s taxonomy. Questions are asked at each level for self testing and some of the assignments are practical ones, to groom the participant to design creative questions for their classrooms to improve their students’ mathematics learning.
After attending our one day workshops on problem solving, the participant teachers got excited about the materials that were presented. Hundreds of teachers who attended our workshops in some of the major cities in Tamil Nadu commented on both the quality and practicality of the materials used in the workshop. On realizing the need to equip all teachers with the skills to incorporate experiential learning activities in their mathematics teaching to enhance the students’ thinking skills, this online course is designed at a very nominal fee so that even teachers in rural places and aspiring teachers get an opportunity to participate and get benefited. With such a desire and ambition, Experiential Math Content Creator course is designed with laborious efforts but aiming at rewarding results of empowering teachers. To provide teachers an opportunity to read research articles related to teaching, this course cites relevant literature.
