Math is more than formulas and equations...

My fellow math nerds and I may be the only people who REALLY enjoyed this show, but the opening always resonated with me.

"We all use math every day: to predict weather, to tell time, to handle money. Math is more than formulas and equations. It's logic. It's rationality. It's using your mind to solve the biggest mysteries we know."

"...more than formulas and equations..." that couldn't be more true for our youngest learners. While they are building the skills to add, subtract, multiply, and divide their teachers are also encouraging them to be pattern recognizers. Pattern recognition leads to deeper mathematical understanding.

Recognizing repeated addition or subtraction is the first step in recognizing linear relationships.

Recognizing repeated multiplication or division is the introduction to geometric sequences and exponential growth and decay.

Ask the kids in your life about what patterns they see. Ask them to predict what comes next in a list of numbers. BUT - and this is the most important part - ask them WHY they made their prediction. Don't let them off the hook with a shrug and "I don't know". Press them to explain their thinking. You might be surprised at what math they see and use every day.

Comments

Homework = Tears? What's the upstream problem?

Tell me if you've heard this one before... Parent and child at the table working on child's homework. Child becomes frustrated and begins to cry Parent becomes equally (or more) frustrated by the tears/the assignment/both. Sound familiar? It's pretty common, but let's ask a new question - what's the upstream problem? Not familiar with the idea of "upstream problems"? It was new to me until very recently - but the best description I've heard is this: There's a town in which every evening a child washes up on the banks of the local river. Every day the fire department rescues the child and is lauded as heroes. One day a new fire chief takes ov...

Keep, Borrow, Change...Right?

Subtraction - Take Aways - Whatever you call it this is the first "big" hurdle for many students in a long race of mathematics. It turns out that this first hurdle is often the first time parents seem to get beyond frustrated with the MANY ways students are presented with solving a subtraction problem. All of the skills you'll see in this video are essentially shortcuts that many discover on their own through mental math and practice. By presenting them to students at a young age they become more and more comfortable with numbers and their reasoning and number sense improves overall. Enjoy!

Cognitive Dissonance - adapting to new information

The last year or so has shown us all a lot about the world we live in and the people we share it with. It's interesting to see how tightly individuals may cling to ideas or beliefs that have later been shown to be inaccurate and have been updated. That's the scientific method in a nutshell - make a prediction, test it, learn something, adjust. Math works the same way, but I'm seeing that the "adjust" step is becoming harder and harder for students to make. I had an experience in my Algebra class that sort of outlined the apparent push to reject what is proven in favor of what makes us comfortable (more about that in the video) and it got me thinking. This whole math education thing (or compulsory schooling in general) isn't about cramming kids' heads full of information. It's more about opening them up to conflicting ideas (cognitive dissonance for all you psychology/education fans out there) and giving them the tools to determine true from false, fac...

Demystifying Elementary Math (from a Secondary Perspective)

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