math(s) with friends
March 26, 2023 11:01 AM Subscribe
My first mathematical activity with students. Fresno State professor Howie Hua teaches math to future elementary school teachers. TikTok (How to mentally calculate the decimal representation of elevenths), Twitter (Factoring quadratics), Youtube (Are you using rectangles when multiplying and dividing?)
It’s been a while since we had a Math Howie post on Metafilter.
posted by zamboni at 12:08 PM on March 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by zamboni at 12:08 PM on March 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
I was a kid who was "bad at math" until I took geometry. I absolutely got geometry. Once I could see numbers as an abstraction of a real thing, so much about mathematics started to click for me.
I'm no math wiz. And I never took advanced math beyond geometry. But in retrospect, I think the way I was taught math was just a bass-ackwards way to present these concepts to little kids. I understand the importance of memorizing multiplication tables. But starting with memorizing these things is making it seem like the abstraction is the important part... or something. I'm not saying I know a better way of teaching mathematics, but I think the way I was taught was probably not the best way.
Cool videos.
posted by SoberHighland at 3:33 PM on March 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm no math wiz. And I never took advanced math beyond geometry. But in retrospect, I think the way I was taught math was just a bass-ackwards way to present these concepts to little kids. I understand the importance of memorizing multiplication tables. But starting with memorizing these things is making it seem like the abstraction is the important part... or something. I'm not saying I know a better way of teaching mathematics, but I think the way I was taught was probably not the best way.
Cool videos.
posted by SoberHighland at 3:33 PM on March 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
I've taught pretty much everything (and I taught student teachers in a large urban district, so I've been in a lot of schools). Many schools, guided by the curriculum specialists who understand math, are increasingly approaching math from an exploratory point of view and focus on developing strong number sense.
However, math is a battlefield. Many parents want their kids to learn the way they were taught, which involves memorization, rote algorithms, little understanding, and neat worksheets, and the parents also want to be able to help their kids with their homework (whether there should be any homework in elementary school at all is open to question, as the research doesn't show any effect from homework on learning and kids struggle with it).
Parents and kids also tend to focus intensely on getting the right answer, and so resist the playful and multi-method approach that actually produces better math sense (and better ability to check whether the answer you got makes sense). Kids also hate "showing their work" because of their "right-answer" focus, even though showing their work gives the teacher insight into their thought processes and allow them to catch aberrant problem-solving methods (I developed an entirely different method of dividing as a kid that only worked up to two-digit numbers, for instance, and it wasn't caught until fifth grade).
Teachers, meanwhile, are often drawn from people who liked school and were "good at it" as kids, which means they often didn't question how they were taught; even innovative elementary teachers tend not to be super good at math, and often struggle with the new methods of teaching for that reason.
tl;dr This kind of math teaching is great and if you know what you're doing, it helps children become confident with mathematics, but it requires patience and knowledge.
posted by Peach at 6:45 PM on March 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
However, math is a battlefield. Many parents want their kids to learn the way they were taught, which involves memorization, rote algorithms, little understanding, and neat worksheets, and the parents also want to be able to help their kids with their homework (whether there should be any homework in elementary school at all is open to question, as the research doesn't show any effect from homework on learning and kids struggle with it).
Parents and kids also tend to focus intensely on getting the right answer, and so resist the playful and multi-method approach that actually produces better math sense (and better ability to check whether the answer you got makes sense). Kids also hate "showing their work" because of their "right-answer" focus, even though showing their work gives the teacher insight into their thought processes and allow them to catch aberrant problem-solving methods (I developed an entirely different method of dividing as a kid that only worked up to two-digit numbers, for instance, and it wasn't caught until fifth grade).
Teachers, meanwhile, are often drawn from people who liked school and were "good at it" as kids, which means they often didn't question how they were taught; even innovative elementary teachers tend not to be super good at math, and often struggle with the new methods of teaching for that reason.
tl;dr This kind of math teaching is great and if you know what you're doing, it helps children become confident with mathematics, but it requires patience and knowledge.
posted by Peach at 6:45 PM on March 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
I was an older student in an elementary teacher education program in a NY state college in the mid 1980s. I was shocked at how many of my young classmates, 99% of whom were female, hated math and science. (They also didn't read much beyond magazines.) Some of them even told me that they couldn't get into any other majors because they had done so poorly on the math part of SATs. If they hated those subjects how the hell were they going to turn little kids onto them in their future classrooms.
posted by mareli at 11:22 AM on March 27, 2023
posted by mareli at 11:22 AM on March 27, 2023
To be fair the guys in my elementary ed programs (the one that trained me and the one I worked in) also hated math and were bad at it. But all of them were really motivated to teach (except the ones who planned to be administrators).
A lot of people went into teaching during the sixties because of the draft which was why a lot of progressive revolutionary education stuff was written around that time. Those guys were so shocked at how horrible a job teaching was.
posted by Peach at 3:01 PM on March 27, 2023
A lot of people went into teaching during the sixties because of the draft which was why a lot of progressive revolutionary education stuff was written around that time. Those guys were so shocked at how horrible a job teaching was.
posted by Peach at 3:01 PM on March 27, 2023
Shout out for Cuisenaire Rods which are great for modern ancient Greeks who do all their elementary math through geometry.
Is multiplication commutative? Yup - see that two 3-rods map to three 2-rods.
Do the square numbers form a series separated by successive odd numbers? Yup - watch me build bigger squares by adding strips on two sides.
Can also build a Lego fort with them.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:12 AM on March 28, 2023
Is multiplication commutative? Yup - see that two 3-rods map to three 2-rods.
Do the square numbers form a series separated by successive odd numbers? Yup - watch me build bigger squares by adding strips on two sides.
Can also build a Lego fort with them.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:12 AM on March 28, 2023
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posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 11:08 AM on March 26, 2023 [2 favorites]