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In ancient times in China, all natural sciences were developed to solve practical problems in agricultural production, such as the calendar, water engineering techniques and arithmetic. In the discipline of arithmetic alone, there are many works such as The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art, The Sun Zi's Mathematical Manual, The Zhou Shadow Gauge Manual and The Xiahou Yang's Mathematical Manual.
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On the other hand, with today's ever-changing technology, we already have a lot of mathematical knowledge that has been gathered and summarised by our predecessors, and we even have supercomputers with super computing power, so many things do not need the human brain to calculate them. Therefore, is learning maths still as important?
The answer to this question is yes. Today, we do not study mathematics simply to learn computational or geometric points, but to exercise more algorithmic thinking and problem-solving skills. Just as the ancients continued to advance mathematics because they needed to solve various livelihood problems, our children need to learn mathematics to better develop their thinking skills, decision-making skills and practical problem-solving abilities.
At Huili School Nantong, we help pupils to better understand the intrinsic connections between mathematical knowledge through a well-designed mathematics curriculum which, in turn, leads to logical thinking about mathematical knowledge itself and further enhances abstract posturing and deep-thinking skills.
In our daily lessons, teachers lead pupils to explore the 'past lives' of mathematical knowledge through advanced teaching methods and guided, inquiry-based and interactive learning.
For example, in a recent Grade 3 Maths lesson, the pupils were learning about fractions. The teacher started with the concept of 'whole' and 'parts' and guided the pupils to explore the definition of fractions through some common things and problems in their lives. "There are 12 coins, how many groups can you divide them into equally?" The pupils got a variety of answers through physical manipulation and discussion between different groups: the 12 coins can be divided in two, with 6 in each part; or 2 in one part, with a total of 6 parts...
When the Grade 4 pupils were learning about circles, instead of asking the pupils to recite straight away the knowledge that the formula for the circumference of a circle is C=2πr=πd, the teacher encouraged the pupils to draw a circle themselves first using various resources in the classroom such as string, pencils, pegs and leather straps. After doing it themselves, the pupils excitedly shared among themselves, "I just had to adjust the length of the string to get different sized circles!" "Once the peg I used to hold it in place moves, the circle won't be drawn properly; this centre point must be fixed." At this point the teacher then brings up the definition of a circle to help summarise, and the pupils have a deeper and more realistic understanding.
Through game-based learning in a maths lesson, pupils no longer feel that abstract concepts in maths are rootless and that they no longer need to take in knowledge through rote memorisation. They understand mathematical concepts more vividly through rich scenarios and apply mathematics to real-life situations. We hope that mathematics will help pupils to know and understand the world better and to use mathematical thinking to solve various problems in their lives.
