It's the End, but I will Never Stop Learning!

Honestly, when I started this semester of school I was dreading taking my math class the most.  I have always hated math with a passion and found no purpose to it for my life.  I mean, I am going to be a Marriage and Family Therapist so why do I need Geometry or Algebra?!  I was sure I was going to need lots of help with my homework and assignments.  Thankfully my sister-in-law was a math major and is now an engineer so I figured with her help I would drag myself through the class.  I am proud to say that I had her help me with the first couple weeks of homework, really just the first chapter, and that is it!

I realized that I didn't mind the class all that much, or at least no more than any of my other classes!  It's not that easy to be a full time student and a full time employee and run a household with 2 kids, a huge dog and a husband!  But I have been doing it for a couple years now and I feel great about my progress.  Probably the thing I feel the best about is the progress I've made in my math class this semester.  

With math, unlike any other class for me, I feel a huge sense of accomplishment when I get my homework done and I have gotten 100%.  The reason for that is I have never been very good at math and just looking at a math book is enough to make me want to run and hide!  Through the course of this class I have learned a lot and enjoyed myself while doing it.  I went to elementary school in the 80's when all we were learning was the basic algorithms and I felt like that was enough.  Even up until a couple weeks into the class I was thinking that there was no need for all these weird math solutions.  We don't need to know why something works, just that it works and the quickest way to figure out a solution.  I was very wrong!  I love the different ways of figuring out a basic division problem.  Now I know that I will not use all of what I have learned in the class going forward, but I know that some of it will be used often.  And most importantly I feel smarter!

I had problems helping my daughter, who is 10 and in 5th grade, with her math homework.  And actually I have had issues for years helping her with certain things on a math worksheet because they were totally foreign to me.  I was not sure what some of the problems were even asking!  I am able to help her much better now and it's only been a few months of a class.

Basically I took this math class for a couple simple reasons.  First it was online and I had to have an online class so that I could continue to work.  Second, it fulfills a core requirement for me to graduate at SCSU.  I was never planning to be an elementary teacher like the rest of the class is.  But even though I will not be teaching kids in a classroom, I am still a teacher at home.  My kids count on me to help them and lead them when they are confused or frustrated.  The one area I had trouble with was math, anything above the basic addition or subtraction problem.  Not any more!  I am not a math genius by any means but I know how to help better than ever before.  Now, if I don't understand the problem I know where to search for the solution.  I have done so much math research in this one semester that I sort of feel like a pro!  I will continue to use a lot of the websites and YouTube channels to help educate my kids and keep myself fresh on the newer styles of math.  I know now that I will never be one of those parents that says they cannot help their kids with their homework because it's too hard for them.  That fact makes me extremely proud.  

Websites and YouTube channels worth looking at:
Edutopia
Teaching Channel
Khan Academy
Math For Elementary Teachers
IXL
Math is Fun

Mental Math Rules

 

In this video we see a classroom using mental math.  I love this video and am very glad I found it!  I don't remember ever really being taught mental math in school.  My memory may just be bad or otherwise it wasn't something that we spent any time on.  This teacher says that she uses mental math strategies with her classroom at least twice a week.

I am capable of mental math even though I was never taught it as a problem solving tool in school.  That is because I was taught memorization of math problems and because as an adult I can use reasoning and my brain lets me easily figure out that 65 and 25 together make 90!

The main reason that I think mental math strategies is so important for kids to be taught is because it helps them see that they will be using that information or skill set for the rest of their lives.  That may not hit home for them until they are a bit older, but it may just be enough to keep them interested in learning. 

My 10 year old daughter was dying to buy a book from Amazon last week and she quickly had to try and figure out if she could afford next day shipping or if she would have to wait the normal 3-5 days!  It was a struggle for her to figure out that if the book was $10.53 and the shipping was $19.95 and she only had $20 then she wouldn't be able to do the next day air.  I am pretty convinced that they don't really push the whole mental math or estimation skill set in her math classes.

I have found a YouTube channel that is amazing for math.  Even though she is in 5th grade and some of the math videos are of a 3rd grade classroom I think it's important for her to get back to the basics and be able to quickly figure out some of the easier problems completely in her head without using her fingers to count.  There is a ton of different videos on the Teaching Channel and I will continue to use this wonderful learning tool for my kids at home.

Estimation?

One skill that I have been using virtually my whole life is estimation.  Coming into this math class I would not have given estimation a second thought as an actual taught mathematical method.  It just seems like guessing and they are never going to teach us to just guess randomly in math...right??  Well I found out that's not the case!

Estimating is an actual skill that is important to use.  How many times do you go to the grocery store with a set amount of money that you either can spend or that you'd like to keep to?  If you're like me then you will do this often!  As you go through grabbing items you keep a running mental tab of the prices of all these items to make sure you are not going to spend more than your set amount.  I usually don't pull out my calculator in the store and punch in the actual prices but instead I use estimation.  I round the prices and then add them mentally.  That's not going to give me the exact dollar amount I will be spending but it does give me a good idea of where I'll be at.

I was always saying that math was not important because we would not be using it in our everyday lives.  For me that is accurate to a point.  Things like estimating and rounding are things that I will use for the rest of my life and they are very important for me to be able to do well.  I do not like going to buy clothes for my kids and wanting to spend no more then $150 and realizing my estimating skills were terrible and I actually walked away spending $200!  I think that showing kids early on that math is something that will be needed for the rest of their lives is very important.   

Cubes and Slash Marks

One of the videos that stood out to me in MML (mymathlab) this week was the one with Cheyenne trying to figure out fair share for 18/6.  At first she was really, or at least seemed, unsure of what to do with the cubes she had.  Maybe I was just reading her wrong or didn't see what she was trying to do at first?  Anyway, she was asked if there were 18 cupcakes at the birthday party and there were 6 kids how many cupcakes would each kid get if we were to divide them equally among all the kids.  She had 20 cubes in front of her; she put two to the side and then proceeded to put 18 out in 3 rows of 6.  So she was able to figure out from that that each kid got 3 cupcakes.

I really like the idea of giving each child a bunch of cubes in order to figure these types of problems out.  You can just watch them figuring it out right in front of you.  Since I will be using this with my son who is going into Kindergarten next fall this video was a great example for me. 

One of the problems I had this week was one about two people having the same amount of something and then one giving one of theirs to the other and then that meant that the one person had just one more than the other.  I knew they were asking why that was not accurate and I literally couldn't figure it out in my mind!  I was thinking, yeah that IS right!  So I did 4 slash marks for each and then took one away from one and gave it to the other and it was obvious then that the person who gave away one was now two short from the other person!  Doing a little hands-on always helps me and I am sure that is true of a lot of people.

My logic...

IIII   IIII I

A great website for future math teachers: http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/maths/contents_multiplication.htm

Videos ARE Helpful When Watched!

In a couple of the videos for this week in my math class I really came to understand how important other ways of learning or teaching are to kids (and unknowing adults!).  In the Multiplication and Expanded Form video I literally learned the simple way to do expanded form.  I do not remember ever being taught expanded form when I was in school.  On some of the other videos we have seen thus far in class I have noticed some of the kids doing this type of solving but I was confused by it.  In this video it is laid out very simply so everyone can understand.  I get why the cross multiplication works now!  And why the expanded form is a great tool for some of the more complicated problems.  And by complicated I mean multiplying at least two, two digit numbers together.  I was always of the mind, even until very recently, that the way I learned math in school was the best and easiest way.  But really, it may be simpler, but it teaches memorization and not necessarily reason.

Then there was the Scaffolding Algorithm for division video (linked at the bottom of this page).  Again, if I were to see a child or person in general, doing this type of problem I would have been pretty confused.  Doing our homework this week and seeing this video spelled it out for me.  This scaffolding method is very helpful for people to figure out some of the bigger division problems, and again, by bigger I mean over double digit problems!  You can get it close or fairly far from the correct answer on the first guess and still end up getting the problem right.  I think it would have been very helpful for me to learn as a kid.  To me it is a kind of estimation.

Just another reminder that all of the things I learned in school as a child 25+ years ago is not the end all be all of learning.  It is okay to expand our knowledge and therefore our teaching methods.  It is more to learn, but in the end it makes it easier for people to actually understand why certain solutions have worked rather than just memorizing problems and answers.
Scaffolding Algorithm for Division

 

I also found a webpage that describes scaffolding method pretty well.  Please check it out for more information.

Struggling with How to Learn

Have you ever felt fairly fluent at something only to realize that the way you are fluent is obsolete?  What I mean is, the way you know how to do something is not the way that it is done any more and therefore you are not doing it right by doing it how you were taught.

What I am getting at is math these days.  I graduated high school in 1997 and I had my last math class in 10th grade.  I did have one college math class in about 2000, but that is it.  I now have a 10 year old daughter and she occasionally needs help with her math homework.  When I look at her math sheets I am stunned.  I literally don't know what it is asking for!  I want to be a help to my daughter but more than anything I find myself frustrated and feeling like a bit of an idiot.  I mean, I am 34 and getting good grades in my college classes, I should be able to help my 5th grader with her math assignments.  But, alas, as frustrated as I get, it doesn't help me figure out how to help her.

When I started this particular math class I was REALLY dreading it.  I am not a fan of math, besides what I like to call baby math, such as 1+1=2 and 2-1= 1.  I was going to have to learn this new age math and it was not going to be fun.  But on one of the first days of the class I watched a couple videos that really got me thinking.  The first video I watched helped to solidify what I had already thought, this new way of teaching math was for the birds.  The video is titled, Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth, and it stars M.J. McDermott.  It basically goes over math as it was taught to me years ago, the classic algorithms.  And goes on to say that the new style of teaching is confusing and pointless, at least that's my take on it.

Then, after reading some of the discussion posts from my classmates and watching the second and third videos, I came to a different conclusion.  The second and third videos are titled, Math Education: A Response to 'An Inconvenient Truth' part 1 & 2, by James Blackburn-Lynch.  He is basically refuting what McDermott is saying in her video and begging the question, why do we have to continue to teach the new generations the same exact things that we were taught as children just because it's comfortable for us.  He says that there is value in teaching our children the reasons behind the math problems and not just making them memorize a bunch of problems and their answers.

So, as this class progresses I expect to learn more about how my daughter is being taught math now and also my own stance on which way of teaching math is better.  Just because something is familiar doesn't mean that it's right.  On the other hand, just because something has been done a certain way for ages doesn't mean that it has to be changed!

I found a wonderful website for my son and daughter to use to practice their math skills.
IXL Maths

Links to the videos:
 An Inconvenient Truth
 A Response pt.1
 A Response pt. 2