Math Without Fear

It is said that babies have to learn to crawl before they can walk and if they don’t, they will eventually go back and learn to crawl. Before you can play songs on the piano, you must first learn the notes the keys stand for, then what chords the notes make, and finally what chords go together to make songs. In these things there is an order in which one must learn the basics before one can build on them. Math is much the same in that the foundational skills must be learned and developed in order to build upon them. There is much debate these days about how this is best accomplished, skill and drill or solid number sense.

Growing up I can recall sitting at the kitchen table with a legal size sheet of paper covered with fractions. The purple ditto ink was faded and hard to read. My dad, an engineer and general math wiz, sat with me trying to explain why 2/3 + ½ = 1 1/6 because I just didn’t get it. All I could see was a sheet of 30 problems that all looked the same and I had no idea how I was going to come up with enough answers, much less the right answers, to complete my assignment. He worked problem after problem and walked me through them at least ten times, but I just couldn’t make sense of the fractions. While my father has the patience of Job, he was completely baffled that what he was showing me didn’t click instantly with me. How could a fairly competent child not understand that easy problem? He had worked it just like my teacher had worked it on the chalkboard at school that day.

It wasn’t until I was in college, in one of my methods for teaching classes, that I was introduced to the “math manipulative”. Our professor showed us how to use everyday items like pizza, M & M’s, measuring cups, playing cards, and dice to show students how to conceptualize math skills. I thought this was a genius idea! By the end of the semester I actually understood and had tools to help teach my future students those fractions that evaded me all those years ago.

Now after teaching for many years, I have learned a great many things. I know not all students learn and develop at the same pace. I understand that not all students learn in the same way, some need visual aides while others need to touch, feel, and manipulate. I also know, while there are many good math curriculums out on the market, there is not one math curriculum that fits the needs of all students. A teacher needs to have an understanding of each student’s strengths and challenges in math. That means a teacher needs to spend time with her students in small groups, large groups, and individually to have a firm grasp on where her students are with their math.

Just like the baby learning to crawl or the child learning to play the piano, students need to have lots of practice with their math skills, but this isn’t to say the practice needs to be just worksheets. Practice can be in the form of games, either on the computer or within groups of students. Practice can be using white boards in small groups or individually. Practice can also be an appropriate amount of problems that are worked on paper with pencil.

As I think back on my younger days spent in the kitchen with my dad, it’s not the faded purple ink on the page with the math problems that I remember most. It’s the look of sheer determination I could see on my father’s face as he struggled to help me understand the problems that came so easily to him. If only we had ordered a pizza and cut it into slices and worked the problems that way.

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Today, we heard from ESK Fifth Grade Teacher Cathy Stivers and his thoughts on how learning math doesn’t have to be scary based on the recent article titled, “Learn math without fear, Stanford expert says,” on the Stanford University website.