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Just teach my kid the math

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Re: Just teach my kid the math

#81

Post by dragonwriter »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #12
ColinWright wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My (very limited) experience of more recent homework is that it makes perfect sense in the context of what the teachers are trying to teach, but no sense out of context to people who learned their maths decades ago. If you'd care to send me a photo of an example of the homework then I can try to give you some context and understanding. My contact details can be derived from my HN profile. I might be a little slow to…

And techers are trying to teach how to make change? I understand “anchoring to fives and tens” but I don’t understand why anyone thinks it’s a good way to do anything except confuse kids. Does independent research prove these approaches increase numeracy?

> I understand “anchoring to fives and tens” but I don’t understand why anyone thinks it’s a good way to do anything except confuse kids.

I found it a huge boost to my ability to do computations without paper or other tools when I learned it in elementary school; I think it's valuable, but I'm not certain that the manner in which it is often being taught now is helpful (which, AFAICT, is not so much a matter of the Common Core standards as poor curriculum attempting to implement the standards.)

Re: Just teach my kid the math

#82

Post by dragonwriter »

credit_guy wrote: post #16

My problem with the "new math" is the lack of volume. Developing a sense for the numbers is best done by working more with numbers; in the "old math" kids had to do thousands of additions in the first and second grade, and developed ten times the sense of numbers compared to kids today. Theory is theory, but practice is practice. Just get over the addition and multiplication, please. That's not where the true math is…

> in the "old math" kids had to do thousands of additions in the first and second grade, and developed ten times the sense of numbers compared to kids today.

I don't think that's generally true; the kids that were particularly successful in math certainly developed more sense of numbers than mod kids today, but AFAICT very many developed almost no sense of numbers.

Re: Just teach my kid the math

#83

Post by dictum »

sethammons wrote: post #54
dorchadas wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a math teacher (Algebra II), I think this would be great. The problem is that most of my students won't go home and watch the videos. Either because they can't (lack of internet access, have to work to help support family, etc.) or are just lazy and won't. I've had to quit giving homework, even to the upper level classes, because nobody would do it. They'd just come in the next day and make excuses and have nothin…

As a former inner city math teacher, I feel you. Getting students to do _anything_ outside the classroom was practically impossible. What worked for me for homework for a little while was having the students do 5 push ups for each day they missed homework in a row. I suddenly was getting 90%+ participation on students completing their homework! It was fantastic until someone told the VP, and the VP asked me if I was…

> It was fantastic until someone told the VP, and the VP asked me if I was actually doing that, whereby they informed me that it was corporal punishment and absolutely against the rules

Funny how being told to perform physical activity is seen as punishment, but having to perform complex mental activities isn't.

Re: Just teach my kid the math

#84

Post by zaroth »

I’ve watched my daughter do her 3rd grade math homework both ways. She’s an ardent rule-follower at her age (and can’t quite understand why the boys in her class can’t stay out of trouble) and really enjoys doing her math homework. Watching her work on the extra credit math assignments and her get so exited when the multiplication problems extend into 8 digits is a lot of fun.

Often she will do the problem the “new” way taking up maybe 10 minutes and a whole sheet of paper which looks more like an art project, and then when she’s done check her work the “old” way in a few seconds, and then go back and find the mistake in the drawings.

She’s happy to do it “because that’s the way [my teacher] wants us to” but she’s faster and better at doing it the traditional way.

My personal opinion is that CC is perhaps better at teaching basic math skills to the bottom 50% and is less likely to lose students along the way, but at the cost of holding back the top 50% of students approximately 1 full grade-level by the time they graduate high school. From my limited sample sized poll students see the new methods as being just as ridiculous as parents see them.

And parents are generally pretty frustrated about this whole fiasco: https://youtu.be/wZEGijN_8R0

Re: Just teach my kid the math

#85

Post by dorchadas »

zaroth wrote: post #84

I’ve watched my daughter do her 3rd grade math homework both ways. She’s an ardent rule-follower at her age (and can’t quite understand why the boys in her class can’t stay out of trouble) and really enjoys doing her math homework. Watching her work on the extra credit math assignments and her get so exited when the multiplication problems extend into 8 digits is a lot of fun. Often she will do the problem the “new”…

> My personal opinion is that CC is perhaps better at teaching basic math skills to the bottom 50% and is less likely to lose students along the way, but at the cost of holding back the top 50% of students approximately 1 full grade-level by the time they graduate high school. From my limited sample sized poll students see the new methods as being just as ridiculous as parents see them.

This is an issue that would occur regardless of CC, I believe. Unless you can differentiate them into separate classes fairly early, and are constantly checking to see if everyone is in the correct group (for instance, I have several students who are labeled as gifted in math who can't do simple addition without a calculator... they were listed as gifted in third grade, and then never tested again), one of the two is always going to suffer. Either you help the higher level kids at the expense of the lower, or the lower at the expense of the higher.

As for 'students see the new methods as being...' it's because they just mimic how their parents see them. Now, I don't teach elementary school so I don't know what they do, but reading comments here it seems they basically teach students how numbers work. And that's a good thing. I have high school students who didn't know that to multiply a number by 15, you could multiply it by 10 and by 5 then add the results. Along the same lines, they didn't know you could multiply by 10 then divide by 2 (or divide by 2 then multiply by 10) to get multiplication by 5. And this impacts them a lot more when we discuss variables and polynomials (which is mostly what Algebra II should be). They have no concept of how numbers work, so they don't understand why x^3/x = x^2.

Re: Just teach my kid the math

#86

Post by geebee »

I don’t have any problem with common core or “new math”. I was a math major myself and have two kids in public school in SFUSD, and I think it’s valuable to develop ease and fluency in problem solving. An example in another thread, 2015 - 1985, is a good example. I like the idea that kids learning arithmetic would see how to solve this without a plug and chug approach.

Here’s why I don’t find it promising: this is mimicry. The US found that other countries that teach math well don’t rely excessively on plug and chug. But these countries draw math teachers from the top math students. These teachers teach this way not because there is a new set of standards to adhere to but because this is how people who are good at math do math.

Until the US draws math teachers from top math students, the new math will just be a new set of plug and chug steps. This is why the parent in the blog entry is frustrated- to them, new path is just more steps than old math. It may feel that way to the teachers as well, if they aren’t understanding what they’re doing.

If we want to mimic Finland, we need to start by drawing teachers from the upper echelons of math students. And once you do this, much of this “new math” will happen organically. That may in fact be the only way it can happen.

Re: Just teach my kid the math

#87

Post by ghaff »

dragonwriter wrote: post #81
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And techers are trying to teach how to make change? I understand “anchoring to fives and tens” but I don’t understand why anyone thinks it’s a good way to do anything except confuse kids. Does independent research prove these approaches increase numeracy?

> I understand “anchoring to fives and tens” but I don’t understand why anyone thinks it’s a good way to do anything except confuse kids. I found it a huge boost to my ability to do computations without paper or other tools when I learned it in elementary school; I think it's valuable, but I'm not certain that the manner in which it is often being taught now is helpful (which, AFAICT, is not so much a matter of the C…

There are systems for doing rapid mental arithmetic. The Trachtenberg system is one that I played around with at one time. [1] I'm not sure how useful they are though outside of needing/wanting to do more rapid calculations in your head.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trachtenberg_system

Re: Just teach my kid the math

#88

Post by ghaff »

hprotagonist wrote: post #43

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA “remember, base 8 is just like base 10, really, if you’re missing two fingers. Now, anyone who gets this right can stay after class and help clean the erasers...”

The funny thing is that New Math's considerable focus on non-base 10 arithmetic and boolean logic was an academic exercise largely divorced from practical application for the vast majority of people at the time. While that may still be true in terms of the overall population, of course they're highly relevant to both programming and digital circuits.

Re: Just teach my kid the math

#89

Post by dorchadas »

geebee wrote: post #86

I don’t have any problem with common core or “new math”. I was a math major myself and have two kids in public school in SFUSD, and I think it’s valuable to develop ease and fluency in problem solving. An example in another thread, 2015 - 1985, is a good example. I like the idea that kids learning arithmetic would see how to solve this without a plug and chug approach. Here’s why I don’t find it promising: this is mi…

The problem comes with how elementary schools are structured here (at least the ones in the district where I teach). If you even have enough teachers for each teacher to only have one grade (i.e. no split classes), they've got one teacher teaching each class until 4th or 5th grade. So you have the same teacher teaching history, science, math and language arts. This person probably struggled with math and often shuddered at the thought of the math portion of the Praxis test to become certified. They don't know how to do the math, but, because of how elementary schools are taught, you can't just hire a math teacher to teach math to all the students.

Personally, I could easily see the benefits of shifting the students to a schedule where you went to a math class, taught by someone who knows math (i.e. the best math students), at the very beginning. It would also help because you could then make it where someone who is good at teaching, say, history, doesn't have to worry about passing a math content exam. Or at least one as in-depth as the math teacher.

But, you also have to attract people to teaching. It's a thankless job, and, in my state, they're currently under attack on pension reform and pay and such. Our governor wants to remove mandatory sick days, for instance. And he wants to guy the pension. Or, he'll keep it all and gut all these other programs and then blame it on the teachers. Public education in the US as a whole is under attack, and that's part of the problem of getting the best math teachers. I'd be willing to bet Finland doesn't have to deal with the issue of charter schools like is currently happening in the US, either.

Re: Just teach my kid the math

#90

Post by hprotagonist »

ghaff wrote: post #88
hprotagonist wrote: post #43

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA “remember, base 8 is just like base 10, really, if you’re missing two fingers. Now, anyone who gets this right can stay after class and help clean the erasers...”

The funny thing is that New Math's considerable focus on non-base 10 arithmetic and boolean logic was an academic exercise largely divorced from practical application for the vast majority of people at the time. While that may still be true in terms of the overall population, of course they're highly relevant to both programming and digital circuits.

Indeed. I’m post new math, but I had Boolean logic in 10th grade and it was a very helpful step up.
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