Edutopia: Math is Everywhere?
Professional Development Adds Up: Integrating Integers Across Disciplines (link)
The first quote that caught my attention was: “We’ve come to the realization that everybody can learn mathematics,” says workshop leader and school math coach Mike Gould. “It’s not a question of capacity anymore; it’s a question of how you deliver it and how you allow people to think about it…” This is an important statement that needs to be adopted by all educational institutions, mentors, and instructors everywhere. There have been years and years of statements regarding women’s abilities in science and math, suggestions that the female mind cannot grasp the concepts as well as men (as an example of what his statement brought to mind). Certainly it is true that not everyone understands material in the same way, but definitive lines cannot be drawn by gender, race, etc.
This article shows how it is incredibly useful to make math visual and applicable. Instead of focusing on the dry rules, “we tear these problems apart, into pieces. The kids really understand and have a number sense of why the problem works the way it does.” And math is about so much more than numbers – “It really allows kids to learn how to reason and problem solve and learn how to effectively communicate. And if they can think conceptually, it opens up not just math; it makes connections for them in the real world. It allows them to explore music and art. It’s all about rhythm and pattern. And if you can get kids to make that association, they have a new way of thinking about what it is they’re thinking about.”
At this Fullerton IV Elementary School, math has been immersed into the school; it is everywhere. Math scores have improved as a result, which is fantastic. When math becomes more than just numbers on the board or on a piece of paper, when it is tangible, there are positive results with the students. Their grades go up; they like math a lot more. And as a math person, it is really exciting to find places where hate of math is not so strong.
Elsewhere on the Edutopia website are several articles on project-based learning. I think math programs would really benefit from projects, especially ones which show the concepts in a practical way. In high school, I had to use calculus in maximize the volume of a box – which I created out of paper – and that was pretty neat. As mentioned in the article, a group of students went outside to visualize all 882.5 feet of the Titanic. Large numbers are hard to materialize mentally – ‘it’s big, but what does that mean?’ The Titanic is reputed to be the largest passenger steamship of its time, but we hardly have context for it now. Even if it was explained as being 2.94 (so, about 3) football fields in length, that gives enough of a context to visualize the length. Of course, the class in the article actually walked the length of the ship and felt the distance more acutely. It is activities like this that will be most useful for teaching, especially for subjects that are considered boring or detestable. It is in those classes in which the students need a stronger pull.
