MAKING CONNECTIONS :  you have read about what the ability to think mathematically involves. In this section we shall discuss ways of developing this ability in children.

As you know, the emphasis of mathematical learning needs to be on the process of finding the answer, and not merely on getting the answer. Therefore, you as a teacher need to encourage children to observe, question, explore and move logically towards an answer. You need to encourage them to systematise their reasoning. How would you do this?

To start with, you can encourage children to ask questions. When children ask you "Why are some leaves green and some brown?", or "How come the moon moves along with us?", or "Where do people go when they die?", you need to answer to their satisfaction. However difficult or silly you may feel the questions are, consider them seriously and help the children to move logically towards an answer.

Another thing that helps is to pose open-ended questions to children, like "In how many different ways can you fold this paper into the shape of a square?". They can be given the opportunity to frame their own questions, as in guessing games that we have mentioned in Sec.3.5. Such opportunities help in making learning less rigid, and allow children's minds to unfold their potential. They would also help the children realise that there can be several solutions to a problem.

You could think of several types of activities for guiding and encouraging children to systematise their reasoning. For example, they could be asked to select criteria for sorting a set of objects, and helped to apply the criteria consistently. Or, they could make hypotheses on the different ways their schoolmates travel to school. Then they could collect record and analyse data to prove or disprove their hypotheses.