Math Matters

Published by

Michelle Martin

November 9, 2009

Today, my first official day back, was all about math. During my leave, I've been reading a lot of books about math teaching, especially how to support children developing their sense of number. At our workshop today I shared with the other teachers some of what I have learned and we had some wonderful discussions about our own practice.

In regular teacher preparation, both at the undergraduate and graduate level, there is a huge emphasis on literacy. Over half of my course work was directly or indirectly about developing literacy in a classroom. For math, I had a single course. I'm not sure, historically, how this happened. Teachers have much more leeway traditionally for how they approach literacy in the classroom. Indeed, it is embedded into most parts of our day from the morning meeting to our closing circle. But for math, a teacher is handed a curriculum, many of which are developed based on current theories of development but those theories are never explicitly stated in the curriculum.

I love teaching math. Over time, I've become more and more effective as a math teacher. But through reading these past months, I became frustrated by how much work on math teaching has been done but has been "kept" from the general teaching population.

I was very taken by some work coming out of Austrailia on early numeracy and developing number sense. I had never thought of number sense as a physical sensation, a feeling of number. But, while I looked at the very direct and incremental teaching that this work described, I realized that this was exactly what many kids who struggle with math are missing. When I hear the word "six" I feel the four that are missing to make 10. Kids who have not developed that tangible sense of number memorize that 6+4=10, 4+6=10, 10-6=4, 100-60=40, 400+600=1000 all as discreet, unrelated pieces of information. A child who had an innate sense of number connects and extrapolates with ease. The child who has not made connections becomes more and more confused as more information is added. The child who does feel connections, becomes more and more assured.

So, how does one teach number sense, especially to a child who is older and who feels they "aren't good at math" and has been "helped" by a series of quick fixes and memorization tricks? (Tricks which, I'll admit, I've been guilty of providing to help a child "get it.") It's a question that we'll be wrestling with as a staff throughout our professional development this year and that we invite you to join us in investigating.

To that end, please mark on your calendar November 19 at 7pm, our parent education Math Night. We've planned a fun and informative evening that will really help you understand how we approach math at PCCS. I'm hoping that each of the Heron families will reach out to a new family and invite them to join you at the event. We had tremendous attendance at curriculum night so I know you understand the importance of truly "getting" the education your child is participating in at Prairie Creek.

Until then, I'd love to start a conversation here about math education and your math experiences. What do you remember about math class? How do you "sense" number? What is most important for our children to do? What does it mean to be a proficient mathematician? What does it mean to be passionate about math? Click on "comment" below to join the conversation. (And check out a great discussion about nature and education on the Robin's Blog.) MM

6 responses to “Math Matters”

Cynthia Gilbertson

November 9, 2009

I just had to be the first to take advantage of the new comment feature! : )
It seems to me that there is something very visual/physical about the sense you are describing. If you have a fixed image of an array of ten spots and you know what six filled spots looks like, then you can also see the shape of the four empty spots in the array. This also allows you to see that the pairing can be flipped, i.e., if the four spots were full the six would be empty.

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Bob Gilbertson

November 10, 2009

I got interested in math because I liked baseball and baseball has a lot of numbers. If a player goes 1-for-4 in his first game, his batting average is .250. If he goes 0-for-3 the next game and 2-for-5 the game after that, what is his batting average? I liked that kind of thing. I don’t remember what my teacher did with the class in general or with the other kids, but with me she did a lot with baseball.

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Michelle Gaydeski

November 10, 2009

Michelle, thank you for all your information on math. I admit that I started to feel the sense of numbers only a few years ago. I had a fifth grade teacher tell my parents that I would never be good in math and not to expect much from me. I still don’t understand why my parents ever told me what she said….but I went on to fail Geometry, do o.k. in Algebra I and LOVE Algebra II! It was because of my teacher!! She loved math and really wanted me to love it, too! In college, I squeaked by Statistics and learned to love it when I applied it in my upper level Psychology classes. So, I thank you for sharing your love of math to your students and inspire them to find their number sense NOW!

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Lizzie Lathrop

November 11, 2009

It seems to me that there are at least two very different kinds of math that may need to be taught differently. I loved learning the multiplication tables, algebra, and trig, because a lot of it involved memorizing and a certain type of logic, which was fun for me. Geometry completely eluded me and protractors made no sense. I think it involves being able to visualize abstractions in space. Hopefully that can be effectively taught, but I do think there is such a thing as “spatial intelligence” that makes it easier for some to grasp these concepts than it is for others.
My 4th grade son is anxious about math, and the problem of the week has been an initially frustrating but ultimately triumphant experience for him. It’s interesting to me that Michelle has noted how little math teaching research gets communicated to teachers, unlike literacy. It would be great for PCCS to instill that passion for math as well as for reading.

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Michelle Wieber

November 12, 2009

After being a PCCS parent for four prior years, I have been able to see how the manipulation of wooden blocks and pegs and marbles and whatever creates a tactile feel for the younger children which becomes a “feeling” in mental math for older children. I love seeing it in action although the first year at PCCS it didn’t look like math to me. (smile) I, personally, struggled with the multiplication tables beyond 10 in 4th grade and thus never learned them. If my parents only knew, I think I would have had help but I was “doing fine” in math and so I let it slide.

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Michelle Martin

November 12, 2009

In response to Lizzie’s comment, in many parts of the world, students study “maths” not “math,” perhaps in recognition that there are several different math strands, each with a different focus and approach. While I do think that some people have a natural affinity for certain kinds of math (some of the research we’ve been looking at says 25% of kids do well in a strand of math regardless of the quality of instruction), I think that we can help students build confidence and ability in math. What we’re realizing as a staff is that the number sense is really a crucial thing to “get right” so that we aren’t building on a shaky foundation.

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I’m Michelle

I teach fourth and fifth graders at Prairie Creek Community School. We’re a public progressive school in rural Minnesota. I use this blog to share moments in our classroom and to reflect upon my practice.