“Mathematics is all around us; it’s part of everyday life,” explains Paquita, a teacher at a rural school in Porcón Alto, in the Peruvian mountains. According to her, numbers can be found in everything we do and this is what she tries to convey to her students.
Her guiding principle is that “without mathematical knowledge, life is very difficult in today’s world” and that is why she draws on her creativity to help her students understand maths. She does so through something that all the children in the area know well: el caldo verde, or green soup in English. This typical regional dish is the core element of Paquita’s maths-based recipe. At Primary School 82912, over 900 kilometres from the country’s capital, Lima, children are learning to add, subtract, multiply and divide through gastronomy.
As such, this maths teacher is transforming herself into a driving force for social change. Paquita provides her students with an opportunity for development in a region where educational infrastructure is limited and resources scarce. Each lesson in the classroom represents a seed that grows and strengthens the social fabric of Porcón Alto. As the teacher herself explains, children at this rural school learn that mathematics is much more than abstract numbers.
“They are learning to solve real-life problems, to think critically and to use mathematics in a way that will be useful to them in the future,” says Paquita.
The recipe for success
Paquita has created a straightforward approach for her class. She uses caldo verde, a typical regional dish, to teach mathematical concepts through practical application. So how does she do it?
The teacher begins by asking a question, for example: “How many kilos of potatoes would it take to make caldo verde for 180 students?” These are the first steps of the mathematical problem, which in turn become an opportunity for children to develop essential mathematical skills such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and the application of proportions.
Using that question as a starting point, she and her students work together to find out what they need to make their recipe. They work out, step by step, how many kilos of potatoes are needed to feed a large number of people.
“If you need 4 kilos of potatoes for 10 students, you need 8 for 20. If we have a food cupboard with ‘x’ kilos of potatoes, how many more do we need to buy?”, she asks them. This is how she steers the conversation so that the students can solve the problem.
At the same time as discovering how many kilos they need to cook the caldo verde, the class calculates the cost of the ingredients. If a kilo of potatoes costs three Peruvian soles, how much would it cost to feed 5, 10 or 100 people?
Students learn not only how to perform calculations, but also how to apply them to real-life situations, connecting theory to their everyday lives. “Sometimes I come up with problems to help them create their own challenges. The job is to get them to work through their own resolution process and to use the key skills they need to master: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division,” the teacher explains.
Digital… caldo verde
As part of ProFuturo’s educational innovation programme using technology, Paquita has also ushered the digital world into the classroom. This means that her students not only learn maths with the recipe for caldo verde, they also do it with devices such as tablets.
The Mathematics ProFuturo platform, powered by IteNlearning‘s technology and used by this teacher, is an educational tool created to revolutionise the way this subject is taught and is aimed particularly at rural and vulnerable communities. Thanks to this technology, Paquita explains, students can practise at their own pace, with low, medium and high-level problems, adapted to their needs and progress.
“Technology is also really important and children need to be aware of it, pay attention to it and learn how to use it so that they can get the most out of it and be prepared for the future,” says the teacher, who recalls how things were when she was a student. Back in my day, she says, “this kind of technology didn’t exist”. And she goes on to say, “Students would sit at a desk and listen to the teacher, who knew everything”.
However, these days, “children shape their learning based on their context, their experiences, what they see around them, and they take that into the classroom,” she adds. She reveals, “We’ve managed to get them to like maths with the tablets. At the school in Porcón Alto, we asked the students and they said it was their favourite subject.”
The students love numbers so much that, the teacher concludes, “the children themselves ask to reschedule the class if there is a holiday”.
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