Chennai government school students begin learning Abacus-based mathematics

Around 7,000 children from 35 government schools as well as those at 100 Illam Thedi Kalvi Centres across Chennai are learning how to use an Abacus and do math

In a bid to make it more fun and engaging, children in government schools are being introduced to Abacus-based mathematics as a part of their co-curricular activities.

“As a co-curricular activity, we decided to tie up with Indian Abacus, a company working with schools and introduce students of Classes 6 to 8 to Abacus-based mathematics. When students came back to school after a prolonged gap owing to the pandemic, our focus was on addressing their learning gaps and this will help them learn and have fun with numbers,” said S. Mars, Chennai District Chief Educational Officer.

Around 7,000 children from 35 government schools as well as those at 100 Illam Thedi Kalvi Centres are learning how to use an Abacus and do math. At an Illam Thedi Kalvi Centre in Sathome, a volunteer said that the children attending the after-school sessions had been taught to use the Abacus.

“Since our focus here is on teaching them fundamental concepts through interactive activities, teaching them to use the Abacus for math has worked well,” she said.

Speaking about their Abacus-based math and skill development programme, Basheer Ahamed, CEO, Indian Abacus, said students would first learn how to use the Abacus, which was an educational counting tool to learn numbers and gradually will be able to do math mentally.

“The programme aims at developing the speed, skill and concentration of students as well as making learning math both engaging and fun for them. We trained schoolteachers as well as Illam Thedi Kalvi volunteers so that they could in turn teach the students,” he said.

An Abacus Kit as well as book are given free of cost to all students under the pilot project and the Abacus used here is a patented product of the Indian Abacus. The pilot project covers government schools for children with special needs as well as resource centres for children with special needs where they would be introduced to Abacus-based mathematics.

Earlier this year, the School Education Department had called for government schools to introduce a slew of initiatives to encourage more extracurricular and co-curricular activities. As a co-curricular activity, this is aimed at making children comfortable with numbers and applying this in classrooms and their school work.