Demystifying Elementary Math (from a Secondary Perspective)

  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...

  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 li...

That quote, is SPOT ON! I don't disagree in the least. (Bet you didn't expect that, did you??) However, I don't know any elementary school students who are sent to the grocery store to do the weekly shopping on a budget alone.  Number lines, hundreds boards, ten frames, algebra tiles, and all the other physical representations of math and numbers give students something concrete to set the stage for learning. We move away from each of them fairly quickly as students become more fluent in their math facts, but they provide a perfect physical and visual reminder for students to mentally refer back to as they learn and grow.  We all encourage our kids to try new things - consider adding new math strategies to that list! (And cheer them on, just like you would if they were trying a new sport or instrument.) 

It's been hard to tell where summer break began this school year (2019-2020 into 2020-2021). And with the strange end of the year leading into and uncertain new one, you and your child can be practicing math. Not with worksheets or computer programs, but in 5 or 10 minutes of conversation a day.  I bet you'll find that all those connections your student was learning at school are still there.  Fostering that learning at home will help ensure your child is safe from summer slide AND fall falter!

By offering multiple ways to arrive at an answer, we are more inclusive of how students think. And in the end, who does that inclusivity hurt? (Being exposed to multiple strategies harms no one and is considered a best practice of mathematics teaching.) And who does it help? (Everyone! Our brightest students benefit from hearing alternative thought processes, and our struggling students benefit from seeing peers solve using methods similar and different from their own.) WIN WIN!

Ah yes, I'm sure we've all seen this or similar postings around the internet - the famous "too smart for elementary school" parent who's really "showing those teachers". The problem I see here is a parent who despite his MANY years of education, failed. He failed to read directions. He failed to answer the question being asked. Without knowing what grade level this problem is aimed at (I'm assuming 1st or 2nd grade), the problem here is not that "math has changed". The problem is that the problems have changed. This highly educated parent (and many of those educated as much or less who see and share this) all fail to see that the question is NOT 427-316 = ??? Instead, the question is demonstrating a method of subtraction (more on that strategy here ) and asking what went wrong for the student. It's about error analysis. I bet if Mr. Engineer Dad had seen the problem labeled Error Analysis his chest would've puffed with p...

                                              I know it's not exactly the most comforting advice to adults who have been through a lot of change, but 1 thing I know for sure is that no school, no teacher, no administrator, no aide wants any child to be poorly educated.  Instead those teachers, administrators, aides, and school officials all know that there is a building process from Kindergarten (or 4K) through senior year of high school.  There is a progression that they've spent (countless) hours working to align so that every topic is covered, every concept is given time to develop, and every student has access to the material when they're ready. The long and short of it is that there is a well thought out process - please trust it.  While it may be frustrating for you at times, remember that you have all the "keys to the castle" as an adult who's be...