Sukhumvit Practical Elementary School, Bangkok, Thailand

Abstract: The B.E. 2551 National Core Curriculum for Basic Education of Thailand explicitly establishes three core educational pillars for mathematics—“application to real life, development of logical thinking, and cooperative inquiry-based practice”—abandoning the traditional teaching model of rote memorization and formula drills. It emphasizes that primary mathematics teaching must be rooted in local life contexts and foster students’ core mathematical literacy through hands-on practice, group collaboration, and inquiry-based investigation. At present, geometry teaching for lower-grade pupils in Thai primary schools is generally marked by shortcomings: lessons consist mainly of concept lecturing and static picture recognition, with students passively memorizing graphic features and lacking an independent process of observation, hands-on verification, and connection to life; teaching materials are detached from Thai local life and folk-cultural contexts, making it difficult for students to transfer mathematical knowledge to everyday situations; and differentiated learning needs across the class are neglected, so uniform tasks cannot accommodate the developmental needs of pupils with different levels of academic ability. These factors lead to rigid graphic cognition and weak application skills.

This paper grounded in the frontline teaching reality of a primary school in Bangkok, takes “Recognition of Plane Figures” (Bab Rud ruang Sam Rup Riap) for Grade 3 as a lesson-based carrier and innovatively constructs an authentic, “local-context stimulation → hands-on construction → group cooperative inquiry → tiered consolidation → life-practice transfer” classroom teaching model. Relying on conventional teaching aids such as cardboard, scissors, string, and everyday objects—without the intervention of any intelligent devices—the model breaks the linear, fixed structure of the traditional “introduction–lecture–exercise–summary” format and reconstructs a five-stage, progressively sequenced classroom flow. It is suitable for the routine teaching conditions of the vast majority of public primary schools in Thailand and can be promoted on a regular basis across regions. The study can provide frontline practical reference for life-oriented inquiry teaching, differentiated classroom reform, and literacy-oriented teaching in Thai primary mathematics.

Keywords: Thai primary school mathematics; life-oriented teaching; hands-on practice; cooperative inquiry; plane figures; classroom teaching case