Math's Lab

Rosy public school provide the facilities of Mathematics laboratory is a place to enjoy mathematics through informal exploration. It is a place where anyone can generate problems and struggle to get a answer. It is a space to explore and design new mathematical activities. So, the maths lab should not be used to assess students’ knowledge of mathematics. Often mathematics lab takes students knowledge beyond the curriculum. Mathematics laboratory is a self-explanatory lab with activities, in which students could come anytime (free to them) and engage in the work, continue working on the problems/tasks, and use teachers as and when they are stuck. In this way, the role of the teacher is not to teach how to progress in the activity but to facilitate inquiry with the mathematics in it. The facilitation could be done either by probing questions, giving an extra resource or asking to follow or discuss with peers. In this report we have described some activities which could typically be included in a school mathematics laboratory. The activities are suitable for students of class 6 to class 10. We have also included a couple of activities suitable for a lower level — the place-value snake and the fraction chart. The items have been grouped under two broad headings: (i) activities and (ii) games and puzzles. The activities could be done individually by students, with guidance from a teacher, or could be used for demonstration with a small group of students. Some of the activities could also be used as teaching aids in a classroom. The games and puzzles are fun to do individually and all of them contain some element of mathematics which can be explored while doing them or as a sequel. Some of these items have been developed by the authors at HBCSE. Others have been taken from articles and books and have been modified or developed further.