During a recent shared learning experience in a grade 6/7 class, I was discouraged by the number of students who moaned and groaned when asked to take out their math books in preparation for a lesson. My position in the class gave me the flexibility of working one-on-one with several students and I took advantage of this opportunity to try to discover what exactly was underlying the contempt. I was surprised by the certainty with which students asserted their math incompetence. They hated math because they “couldn’t do it.” Since I relate to the feeling of not wanting to work on something at which I am consistently unsuccessful, the explanation made sense to me. But why can't they do it? What is so difficult? Taken in small steps, math logically unfolds. Or does it? During the first lesson, the students were supposed to be working on lowest common multiples (LCM). The student with whom I worked closely wasn’t very familiar with the concept of multiplication, so the idea that some numbers shared something in common to do with multiplication confused her even more. I ended up spending the entire lesson one-on-one with her, first reviewing the idea of multiplication through arrays, and then working on a multiplication chart in order to show her how she might use the chart as a tool to help with LCM. Later that week, in considering why math is difficult for students, I read several articles which shed light on the topic in different ways. For the next few entries of my math blog I would like to share these ideas. The first article suggested that the trouble might lie in the fact that many math concepts aren’t easily translated into mental representations (this idea will be fleshed out further on). The article didn’t dig into the depth of brain development research, so there wasn’t a focus on the relationship between formative development and math readiness. However, due to my own experience with mathematics, both personally and throughout my daughter’s course of learning, I am convinced that math readiness is an important consideration in the elementary classroom where learners possess a wide range of differences in learning styles, numeracy familiarity (previous knowledge) and levels of cognitive development. Perhaps this is an obvious reflection, yet the observations I have made in recent classrooms confirm my suspicions that math readiness is often unaccounted for—that is to say, it appeared that all students were expected to be able to do the work presented in the lesson, and yet they were not all able to complete the tasks. I realize the issue is more complex than student readiness; there are also considerations such as how well the teacher knows the subject, and how thoroughly it is taught. The second article speaks to the so-called “math wars,” a debate between “procedural knowledge” and “conceptual knowledge” as the most effective approach for math instruction, offering an evidence-based, developmental perspective on math education. The third article presents evidence that early home experiences that expose children to quantitative activities and indirect numeracy activities (such as card games) provide a foundation for better acquisition of mathematics in school. The study thus implies that students who may have missed out on home numeracy experiences could benefit from similar types of experiences in school. Perhaps, playing cards instead of learning about lowest common multiples will be a better use of time for the development of numeracy skills. Before we come to any definitive conclusions, we should look a little closer; please follow my math blog to see how the evidence unfolds.
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AuthorNatalie Nickerson; that's me. Archives
March 2016
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