Nothing Basic About Teaching Mathematics
The word basic implies something is simple, straightforward, or easy. However, there is nothing easy about teaching the K-5 Mathematics Standard Course of Study. What many of us traditionally knew as math was taught by facts and rules, but today, getting the answer is no longer good enough. It is about attending explicitly to connections among facts, procedures, and ideas and encouraging students to wrestle with the important ideas in an intentional and conscious way.
Nothing is simple anymore – as we are in the Information Age where information is doubling every five years and encyclopedias are being updated with Wikipedia. More information has been produced in the last 30 years than in the previous five thousand years. What does that mean for our children in mathematics education? We must produce mathematically powerful thinkers who not only can “memorize,” but analyze and comprehend how it works. And once they analyze and comprehend, they must also be able to communicate their thinking.
If you would like to examine the breadth and depth of your child’s mathematics curriculum, please visit: http://community.learnnc.org/dpi/math and click on Instructional Resources, followed by the appropriate grade level. For further help with terminology, click on Glossary of Mathematical Terms for Parents and Teachers in English and Spanish.
Common Misperceptions about Mathematics: (National Research Council)
1. Math is about learning to compute.
Many of us in the U.S. had math instruction that focused primarily on computation, with little emphasis on understanding. If one believes that math is primarily about computation, then sense making may never take place.
2. Mathematics is about “following rules” to guarantee correct answers.
If mathematic procedures are understood as inventions designed to make common problems more easily solvable and to facilitate communication involving quantity, those procedures take on new meaning. Different procedures can be compared for their advantages and disadvantages.
3. Some people have the ability to “do math” and some don’t.
This is a serious preconception in the U.S. but not in other countries where the idea is that learning depends on the “energy expended” rather than the ability. That accounts for a significant difference in performance.
Helen Keller once said, “There is one thing worse than not being able to see, being able to see and having no vision.” We in Wake County have a vision that all students can become mathematically powerful thinkers and will be prepared for a future where they will have to compete in a global economy, which will be dominated by those who can think of the next new invention or technology or equation.
Extending Mathematical Thinking
Here are some suggestions of how you can work with your child to extend mathematical thinking:
• Look for numbers wherever you can find them. Have your child practice reading them to you. Cut numbers out of the newspaper and put them in numerical order. Take a number and see whether your child can find the place value of each digit.
• Read counting books.
• Count objects, change by pennies, nickels and dimes.
• Play board games where children advance spaces on a board.
• Play dominoes and “war” with dominoes or cards.
• Use beans or counters when children are beginning to add and subtract.
• Get a ruler and measure everything in centimeters and inches. Use a meter stick to measure in meters and feet. Find reasons to measure and have your child do it for you.
• Play spatial visualization games with pattern block pieces or puzzles.
• Find the perimeter in every room in your house. Make a diagram of a room and measure the furniture. See how many different places your couch or bed will fit.
• Work on an allowance budget. Have your child keep track of money spent and look at what happens to the money.
• Play addition, subtraction, multiplication and division games. (There are many good ones out there.)
• Go bargain shopping and compare prices. See if you can find the best deal.
• Figure mileage every time you get in the car.
• Have your child teach you about what they learned at school in Math. Those who can teach a subject are going to remember 90% of what they have taught.
Suggestions for Parents - Websites
Kendall Hunt Publishing’s Parent Website
Interactive math website for children
National Council of Teachers of Math