Math Teachers at Play #5
[Photo by Alex Kehr.]
Welcome to the Math Teachers At Play blog carnival — which is not just for math teachers! If you like to learn new things and play around with ideas, you are sure to find something of interest. Let the mathematical fun begin…
Buddy-Style Math: Doing Homework Without Tears
My daughter Kitten strongly dislikes math when forced to do it on her own, so I am trying to get back into the habit of doing “Buddy-Style Math” with her. We take turns working the problems in her workbook: mine, hers, mine, hers, and so on down the page. We work each problem out loud, explaining how we got the answer and checking each other as we go.
In a way, it is like Charlotte Mason-style narration applied to math, since my daughter has to process her thoughts in order to explain how she worked the problem, which fixes the math concepts more deeply in her mind.
Continue reading Buddy-Style Math: Doing Homework Without Tears
How DO We Learn Math?
What makes it possible to learn advanced math fairly quickly is that the human brain is capable of learning to follow a given set of rules without understanding them, and apply them in an intelligent and useful fashion. Given sufficient practice, the brain eventually discovers (or creates) meaning in what began as a meaningless game.
— Keith Devlin
Should Children Learn Math by Starting with Counting?
It seems obvious that our children must have a wide range of experience with real world objects before counting, addition, or subtraction mean anything to them. But are other topics, such as calculus, better learned as abstract rules — as a game that we play with symbols? And what about the topics in the middle? For instance, how best can we break our algebra students of common errors such as distributing the square or canceling out addition terms?
To teach effectively, I need to understand how students learn. Do different approaches work best with different concepts? Or at different ages or stages of development? I can think of at least 3 ways that I have learned math — what about you? How do you and your children learn?
Math Teachers at Play #2
[Photo by Sister72.]
Welcome to the second Math Teachers At Play blog carnival! Some articles were submitted by their authors, other were drawn from the back-log in my blog reader, and I’ve spiced it all up with a few of my favorite quotations.
Let the mathematical fun begin…
Math Teachers at Play #1
[Photo by StuSeeger.]
Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Math Teachers At Play blog carnival! I hope you enjoy this collection of tips, tidbits, games, and activities for students and teachers of preschool-12th grade mathematics.
For this first carnival, I’ve drawn several recent posts from my blog reader as examples of the types of posts I’d love to include in future editions of Math Teachers at Play. I tried to find something for everyone, from multiplication drill for elementary students to advice for understanding high school math equations.
Let the mathematical fun begin…
Writing to Learn Math II
[Photo by Andy Hay.]
In addition to all the funny Google searches, I get plenty of normal inquiries about math topics. People come here looking for help with fractions, word problems, and math club activities — no surprise, those — but I would never have predicted the popularity of the search topic “writing in math class.”
Last year, I compiled a variety of math journal resources, but I’ve found many more since then, especially for older (high school and college) students. So if you’re looking for new ways to get your math students writing…
30+ Things to Do with a Hundred Chart
[Photo by geishaboy500 via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).]
Are you looking for creative ways to help your children study math? Even without a workbook or teacher’s manual, your kids can learn a lot about numbers. Just spend an afternoon playing around with a hundred chart (also called a hundred board or hundred grid).
My free 50-page PDF Hundred Charts Galore! printables file features 1–100 charts, 0–99 charts, bottom’s-up versions, multiple-chart pages, blank charts, game boards, and more. Everything you need to play the activities below and those in my new 70+ Things to Do with a Hundred Chart book.
Download Free “Hundred Charts Galore!” Printables
Shop for “70+ Things To Do with a Hundred Chart” Book
And now, let’s play…
What’s Wrong with “Repeated Addition”?
[Photo by Alejandra Mavroski.]
Myrtle called it The article that launched a thousand posts…, and counting comments on this and several other blogs, that may not be too much of an exaggeration. Yet the discussion feels incomplete — I have not been able to put into words all that I want to say. Thus, at the risk of once again revealing my mathematical ignorance, I am going to try another response to Keith Devlin’s multiplication articles.
Let me state up front that I speak as a teacher, not as a mathematician. I am not qualified, nor do I intend, to argue about the implications of Peano’s Axioms. My experience lies primarily in teaching K-10, from elementary arithmetic through basic algebra and geometry. I remember only snippets of my college math classes, back in the days when we worried more about nuclear winter than global warming.
I will start with a few things we can all agree on…
If It Ain’t Repeated Addition, What Is It?
[Photo by SuperFantastic.]
Keith Devlin’s latest article, It Ain’t No Repeated Addition, brought me up short. I have used the “multiplication is repeated addition” formula many times in the past — for instance, in explaining order of operations. But according to Devlin:
Multiplication simply is not repeated addition, and telling young pupils it is inevitably leads to problems when they subsequently learn that it is not.
I found myself arguing with the article as I read it. (Does anybody else do that?) If multiplication is not repeated addition, then what in the world is it?
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 
