Shweta S. Naik

Designation : Scientific Officer (D)

Works at the Mathematics Education Cell of HBCSE. More information about Mathematics Education activities of HBCSE can be found here.

Projects

Homi Bhabha Mathematics Curriculum

Did class room observations and teaching in a school which uses the 'Maths for Every Child' for class III, which gave us inputs for developing Teacher's Handbook for the text-cum-workbook. I am involved in the developmental work of the text-cum-workbooks for grade IV and Vof the “Maths for Every Child” series, as part of the Homi Bhabha Mathematics Curriculum project.

Arithmetic - Algebra project

Worked with Rakhi Banerjee for the development of the sequence of Algebra teaching with more emphasis on Arithmetic – Algebra transition. This sequence is the outcome of our longitudinal project of teaching Arithmetic – Algebra for last three years. I also worked with Dr. Subramaniam and Ms. Pradnya Kadam, trying out the sequence mentioned above (Arithmetic-Algebra) in actual school settings. The project was later continued in the HBCSE campus.

Fractions-Ratio study

The study started as the part of the curriculum development project under the guidance of Dr. Subramaniam. A summer camp was arranged for the students under this project. I was involved in this project as a designer as well as a teacher. The camp contents deals with multiplicative relationship as underlaying structure of the concepts learned in the middle school. The documentation of the camp was done by taking video-recordings of the classrooms, logs written by me as a teacher and students' daily worksheets. The data analysis shows very interesting result which motivated us for the further extension of the study.

Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)

CBSE workshops in UAE: Conducted a two day workshop for teachers teaching in CBSE schools of Muscat and Dubai on development of Mathematics Laboratories in their schools in the month of Novemebr, 2005. The major emphasis of this workshop was on how to use the guideline book made by CBSE and also creating awareness about what is a mathematics laboratory and how to implement it in very efficient and useful way. I was also one of the authors of the book Guidelines for Mathematics Laboratory in Schools, Class IX.

United Nations of Children's Fund (UNICEF)

We collaborated with UNICEF for the material development workshop for grade III and IV for 14 states, based on Homi Bhabha Curriculum textbooks. In the collaboration total three interactions were planned. The first interaction was in the form of workshops for two days - 31st July and 1st August. The participants were the representatives from SCERT's and DIET's of 11 states along with some regional UNICEF coordinators. The objective of the workshop was to introduce them to Homi Bhabha Curriculum and also to decide the later workshops for designing actual material for these states, based on Homi Bhabha Curriculum.

Beside this collaboration we are also worked separately with UNICEF – Tamilnadu. We conducted a two days training programme on 27th and 28th May, 2006 for the people from UNICEF and SCERT, Tamilnadu.

Workshops, Trainings & Lectures for Students & Teachers

Nehru Science Centre, Mumbai (19th May 2006): Conducted a workshop for the students of grade 9th and 10th from the urban areas of Brihan Mumbai on “The joy of Mathematics”.

Nehru Science Centre, Mumbai (13th July 2006): Conducted a workshop for the students of grade 8th from the urban areas of Brihan Mumbai on “The joy of Mathematics”.

Symbiosis school, Nasik (20th March 2006): Conducted a workshop on mathematics laboratory for the students of grade 8, 9 and 10. Also had a meeting with teachers of the school for deciding the guidelines for developing maths lab in their school.

Atomic Energy Education Society (1st to 10th May, 2006): Conducted a orientation programme for students of Junior Science and Mathematics Olympiad.

Nehru Science Centre, Mumbai (11th August 2006): Conducted a workshop for the students of grade 8th and 9th from the urban areas of Brihan Mumbai on “The joy of Mathematics”.

S. K. Somaiya Junior college of education (20th August 2006): Conducted a one day workshop for the students (around 60) studying in diploma in education on “Fun in Mathematics”.

Atomic energy central school no. 2, Tarapur (28-29 July, 2006): Conducted a workshop for teachers teaching at elementary and middle school level on “Hands on Mathematics”.

The Cathedral and John Cannon School (July 2006): Chaired the discussion meeting of the school teachers arranged for the discussion on “Development of Mathematics laboratory”. Also helped them in developing the same.

NCRA, Pune (28th February to 1st March, 2006): Exhibited the activities from Mathematics laboratory on the ocassion of open day at GMRT, an observatory of NCRA. The exhibition was open for all the students and people from nearby villages, around 10,000 to 15,000 people visited this exhibition.

Delivered a lecture on “Developing teaching aids in primary level” in the workshop arranged by IWSA, Vashi on 18th February, 2006.

Delivered a lecture on “Mathematical Modeling” during the Science week arranged at AECS-2 in Tarapur on 29th July, 2006.

Delivered a lecture on “Experiments in Mathematics” during the science week arranged at AECS in Mumbai on 16th August, 2006.

NAANDI Foundation
Conducted a 'two day' teacher training programme for the teachers teaching in elementary schools of rural areas of Paderu valley in Vishakhapattanam. (August 2005)

Conducted a 'two day' teacher training programme for the teachers teaching in elementary schools of urban areas of Hyderabad. (August 2005)

Delivered a half day orientation programme for the teachers of Nutan Vidyamandir, Mankhurd teaching in elementary level on “Teaching Qualitatively”. (4th August 2006)

Mathematics Laboratory

Development of maths lab - I worked on the development of the maths lab with my colleagues. Before most of the workshops and teacher training programmes we tried to devise some new games and activities in our lab. Maintaining the maths lab is another job, which takes considerable time.

Lab visits - Students and teachers from various schools and B. Ed. students, often visit our centre. My duties include guiding them on using maths lab, helping them in making some teaching aids and activities and explaining about different mathematics games.

Junior maths Olympiad - Every year we have an enrichment programme for the students of the Junior Olympiad. I handled this four-day programme with the help of Smita Patil & Pradnya Kadam. There were 4 batches consisted of 12 students in each batch. Every student has to complete at least 6 assignments along with two worksheets, one based on enumeration and generalizing the formula for number of cubes in a given rectangular cuboid. The other worksheet is developed on Koenigsberg' bridge problem, which introduces to ideas of region and odd and even points.

Courses/ Seminars

Course attended : Visual Imagery (Dr. Subramaniam), Cognitive Science (Dr. Subramaniam), Philosophy of Science (Prof. Arvind Kumar), Geometry (Dr. Subramaniam)

Papers presented during courses:
Students' understanding of 3-dimensional Cube arrays: findings from a research and curriculum development Project – M. T. Batista, D. H. Clements”

Publications

Writings
Wrote a Mathematics activity book for grade X along with Prof. Arvind Kumar and others, Guidelines for Mathematics Laboratory in Schools, Class X, published by CBSE in March 2006. This book is used by CBSE school teachers as guidebook for taking sessions in the Mathematics Laboratory.

Translations
Translated a lecture on “Area and volume: Some philosophical aspects” by Prof. Bapat, delivered at National conference in Mathematics education in Delhi, from Marathi to English.

Translated the Teachers handbook for grade three of Homi Bhabha Curriculum, written by Dr. K. Subramaniam from English to Marathi.

Conferences

National Conference on Mathematics Education, in Delhi.

epiSTEME 1

epiSTEME 2