As I observe classrooms, view lesson videos in the Day in the Life presentations, and listen to the students applaud in the Tuesday Town Meeting when asked, “How many of you like math?” I am proud…of our math instruction.
Mrs. Driskill gave me a math article titled “Mathematical Swindling” by Eugene Maier. The article made me think about my own mathematical abilities. I was confident in math, got A’s in my classes, did what my math teacher told me, and coveted the right answer. I was a math swindler! As the article states, I “remembered computational procedures and techniques and applied them to textbook exercises during a weekly quiz”.
It wasn’t until I taught math that I truly understood the majority of the concepts. I knew how to calculate and recite math facts, but there is so much more to math than just this! Math includes the way you think about numbers, the way you manipulate numbers, the way you use the memorized math facts, and the way you recognize how numbers are used in real life applications.
When teaching math, it is important to focus on concepts, on specific objectives, and “how” to best teach these concepts and objectives to meet the developmental needs of each student. Conceptual understanding, memorized algorithms, and developmental approaches mix and mingle to create true mathematical awareness. For instance, 4x5=20 is not the same as 5x4=20. Four sets of five are very different than five sets of 4 although the answer is 20 in both examples.
Research indicates that students are not truly able to think abstractly about math until they reach 10 years of age…somewhere during their 4th grade year. Throughout Early Childhood Education and Elementary Education, teachers move the students from the concrete to the semi-concrete to the semi-abstract manipulation of concepts. New concepts are best understood through hands-on exploration and discussion versus a “this is how you do it” approach.
With this said, math practice is another very important piece and one I do not want to dismiss. This includes class work, timed tests for math fact recall, homework, and Study Island.
In class, we will be developing each student…each mathematician…through concept building, algorithm exploration, and developmental math tasks. At home, we encourage ongoing computational practice, as well as weekly repetition through our Study Island program.
This is our second year utilizing Study Island as a supplemental piece of our math program with emphasis on standardized testing format. We have a building license for this web-based program which is accessible to students at school and at home. If you have internet access, your child can log on to Study Island. Although we have been using this resource at school, we now encourage you to use it at home.
Your children have the log-in information for the site – www.studyisland.com. If you have questions about this resource, feel free to contact your classroom teacher, Trish Stripling (Study Island Coordinator), or Study Island at support@studyisland.com.
Here is another excerpt from the Mathematical Swindling article.
“As part of a research project to assess children’s understanding of mathematics, an elementary school girl had been interviewed. The girl had no difficulty reciting subtraction facts. However, when the interviewer provided her with a collection of tile and asked her to demonstrate the meaning of the statement “16-9=7” with the tile, the young girl was at a loss. Finally, when urged by the interviewer to do anything at all with the tile to portray the statement, the girl used the tile to form numerals; much in the same manner she would have recorded this subtraction fact with paper and pencil. There were no meanings behind the symbols, yet this young lady would have made short work of a page of subtraction exercises.”
To end, I am very proud of the thinking that goes on in the classrooms with regards to math! Math should not be a mystery. Math should not be watered down to facts. Math deserves so much more, and so do our young mathematicians!
Enjoy Study Island,
Suzanne
