Volume 7 Issue 3: The November issue has beaten the nay-sayers at their own game with articles that celebrate the joy of doing mathematics through games, stories, applications of mathematics and activities on line and in the classroom. 

Explore the ​‘Evolution’ of stars, the Earth, life, and humans through three articles for our adult readers and one short story written for young adults. 

In ​‘Annals of History’ relive the contentious process of arriving at the unexpected mathematical pattern that has become key to our understanding of the diversity of life on Earth. 

Read ​‘Research to Practice’, ​‘The Science Educator at Work’ and ​‘Teaching as if the Earth Matters’ to see how complex concepts related to energy, evolution and soil can be taught through metaphors, art and real-world experiences. 

Learn more about Lynn Margulis’s ​‘controversial’ ideas and life in science in ​‘Biography of a Scientist’. If you’d like more, try some simple classroom experiments from ​‘The Science Lab’ to understand foundational principles in Physics. 

Use the seven activity sheets from ​‘Life in your Backyard’ to introduce your students to the fascinating world of spiders. Plus, enjoy our nine pull-out posters on themes as diverse as ​‘Benthic Fauna’, ​‘The Hard Problem of Consciousness’, and ​‘Ocean Acidification’.

Education initiatives are part of governments all across the globe, guided by a much-deliberated system of principles influencing decisions that are aimed at achieving pre-determined outcomes, which, in turn, are perceived to be beneficial to a particular country’s goals. Much thought goes on behind creating initiatives: they are statements of intent and, equally, the task of implementation is a very complex one. Not just that, innovative education initiatives have the huge additional responsibility of creating and shaping future generations, who, in turn, are any country’s future. The initiatives have to keep in mind the cultural and social norms of the country, while creating the atmosphere for salutary change. Another aspect that has to be taken into account while designing innovative government initiatives in education is the changes in society and its demands, both locally and globally, and rethink their strategies in order to benefit a new and contemporary scenario which will equip children to face and handle challenges of current times.

Volume 7 Issue 2: And it’s out! Most of you would have already received your copy of the July issue of At Right Angles, here’s the official announcement and the link with the welcome news that AtRiA is finally a whole school math resource! The shift all the way to Primary is marked with several new sub-sections in ClassRoom: from Sense-Making in Mathematics – the cover says it all- to TearOut- where all a busy teacher has to do is to tear out a ready made worksheet – complete with facilitator notes- and use it to challenge students to think in fun mathematical ways. As always, PullOut shares strategies and tips on a specific theme, this time we continue our series on Algebra.

And to top it all, we have not one but two students contributing articles to the Features section, no less! Enjoy a great read!

पाठशाला भीतर और बाहर का यह पहला अंक है। इस अंक में कक्षा और शिक्षकों से जुड़े विभिन्न विषयों पर कई लेख केन्द्रित हैं जो इनसे जुड़ी चिंताएँ और सवाल उठाते हैं। क्या कक्षा में सीसीटीवी कैमरों का उपयोग करना उचित है; क्या शिक्षक पेशेवर है और पेशेवर शब्द का मायने क्या है, जैसे सवाल इसमें शामिल हैं। अन्य लेख जिन मुद्दों से सम्बन्धित हैं, वे हैं- बोर्ड परीक्षाओं के प्रति हमारा दृष्टिकोण क्या होना चाहिए; हमें पर्यावरण अध्ययन की कक्षा में बातचीत कैसे शुरू करनी चाहिए; बच्चों की उच्चारण सम्बन्धी गलतियों पर प्रतिक्रिया कैसे देनी चाहिए; क्या एक ​‘अच्छी कक्षा’ गणित की ​‘सफ़ल कक्षा’ भी हो सकती है? आदि।

The first issue of ​“Pathshala ..” covers matters of classroom and teachers through many articles and raises a few areas of concern and questions. This includes appropriateness or otherwise of using CCTV cameras in classrooms, whether the teacher is a professional and what does the word professional mean. Other articles deal with what should be our attitude to board examinations, how should we begin to have a dialogue in an environmental studies class, how should we react to pronunciation mistakes of children and whether a mathematics class perceived to be ​‘good’ is also a useful learning class.

Volume 7 Issue 1: This issue of AtRiA welcomes you to the Math Village. Where house numbers, rangoli patterns, piles of fruit and even a child’s amusement device speaks to the instictive mathematician in each of us.

Read about these in Triangular Numbers in Features and the House Number Problem in ClassRoom. Appropriately, many of these problems were prompted by Ramanujan in his village. The Review is of a book which was used to teach a pre-course at the School of Arts and Sciences, Azim Premji University and it syncs perfectly with the theme of finding mathematics in the most unexpected places.

Hone up on how to create a Conjecturing ClassRoom or generate Elementary Cellular Automata! Misconceptions in Fractions and an analysis of common errors in Algebra give an insight into students’ struggles with mathematics and the PullOut, too, focuses on Algebra and how to make a seamless move from Arithmetic to Algebra.