-Bhupinder Gogia, Principal, Sat Paul Mittal School, Ludhiana
Use of technology has revolutionized the teaching learning process more so in the last one year when the pandemic confined everyone in their homes and forced educators to review their resources. One way to make teaching learning more effective was to make it child centric by teachers speaking the language of technology that the children understand easily and integrating various subjects in such a way that the entire experience becomes wholesome. At Sat Paul Mittal School, we consider it our foremost duty to equip our students for the future by creating an environment of blended learning where the students and teachers use tools to create and learn about various situations.
Adhering to the school’s vision of producing leaders of tomorrow who are technologically proficient, socially aware, and sensitive to environmental and social issues, this year, celebration of the Earth Day was integrated with various activities conducted by mathematics department. Students not only got together to discuss and know more about the sustainable development goals but also understand the world around them through mathematical concepts such as symmetry, sets, green banking and much more.
Class X – Green Banking
Gamification was used to engage students in fun filled activities and encouraged to find facts Earth Day and how sustainable development is the only way to save our planet. Gamification, a method of incorporating game design elements in non-game contexts like classroom teaching and management, is an ideal way to inculcate the right values without sounding too didactic. In fact, our students of Class X loved the game about Green Banking and participated with much enthusiasm.
Class IX – Environmental Sets
The Mathematic educators of Class IX chose to sensitize the children about the conservation of natural resources and to motivate them to do their bit towards making their planet even more beautiful through An Environmental Quiz- Amalgamating the current issue of global warming with the mathematical concept of “Sets”.
The activity commenced with a power point presentation of the quiz with all the sets in it related to the Earth like the “Biodegradables”, “Greens”, etc. In addition to the Environmental Quiz, the teachers also empowered the students to themselves make presentations in the form of PPTs, Word document etc. stating some facts about the Earth Day. This was done using the Breakout rooms available in Microsoft Teams. They left an imprint on the impressionable minds of the students through the Environmental Quiz and the presentations which were prepared by the students themselves. The students took a pledge to preserve and conserve their self-sustaining planet, our benevolent Mother Earth.
Class VIII – Algebraic Earthquations
The Earth Day started with Class VIII students going through activity sheet shared with them. The teacher read out the instructions given in the sheet to solve the questionnaire. Following the instructions given, the 2 equations were chosen by the students who competed with each other to give the correct answers to ‘Save the Earth’.
In addition to this, the students were divided into groups using the breakout rooms where they as a Team decided on their pledge for the Earth Day and presented the same using various IT tools.
Class VII – Equilibrium in Mathematics
For grade VII, The mathematics educators divided the students into groups of three. One teammate worked on finding symmetrical things in the environment like butterfly, leaf, tree, flower, Earth etc. Second teammate prepared a Powerpoint presentation explaining the object chosen, the material used by them, etc. The third was in-charge of presentation. Each group was adjudged on the basis of Content, Creativity, Presentation and Innovation.
Class VI
Technology paves the ground for youngsters to solve problems and lead revolutions especially when it comes to environment. It is an exciting time to be an educator and exchange ideas with young learners who have ideas of their own. The class 6 were shown a power point presentation through which the children were made aware of the importance of earth day. It was followed by the children expressing their views on how they can save their mother earth. Afterwards, a quiz was conducted with the help of Microsoft form in which questions were asked about mother earth. The Satyans participated whole-heartedly and in the process learnt more about our mother Earth.
Conclusion:
What could be better than to be apprised with the global issues and the need for sustainable development while working with your peers on an intriguing math project. Earth Day proved to be an opportunity for the mathematics department at Sat Paul Mittal School to integrate the prevalent environmental issues with mathematics. It is truly said that there is symmetry all around us. There is plenty of math to be discovered in the natural world, from patterns in Nature to Nature’s engineering. A symbiosis exists between basic scientific principles and their mathematical expressions in Nature.
Check the Project Presentation here