WWYD with this math situation

[Staceyshoe]

I wouldn't consider ds "mathy" because he does not intuitively understand math. But he's PG and a very fast learner. I love SM for him because I think it really teaches kids (and some parents--like me! :tongue_smilie:) to, not just do math, but think mathematically. When we're working on a new mental math strategy, ds "gets" it and uses it regularly. But as soon as it's not the focus, he falls back to just working the algorithm. In the spring, we took 6 weeks off from curriculum and played daily math games focusing on the mental math strategies he had learned. He used them regularly until we moved on to something else. Now it's back to just working the algorithms. We're going to be starting back again soon, and I'm conflicted about whether to move forward with our curriculum or go back to math games.

 

A little more about ds: He is a very logical, flexible thinker. (He just turned 6 and has completed half of Building Thinking Skills 2 with absolutely no assistance from me.) He's naturally a science and logic minded kid--a total whiz at patterns, riddles, and extremely inquisitive. Somehow those skills just aren't transferring to math. For what it's worth, we just did a very thorough psycho-educational assessment for him, and the psychologist mentioned that his higher order abstract math skills are a huge intellectual strength. He predicted that ds would whiz through more advanced math later.

 

I really want to do math games, but not if there's no lasting value. WWYD with a kid like this? The SM manual says to let a student fall back on the algorithms when they aren't comfortable with mental math strategies, but if that's all he does then he's missing so much of the value SM offers.

[Dana]

I'd let him go with the algorithm. Maybe in 3 or 4, you could get some of the books that are just practicing mental math to review. I've got the Speed Maths books through singapore.com.

[jenbrdsly]

I have really strong opinions about not teaching children traditional algorithms until they have 100% solid conceptulal understanding of the math they are doing. (Yes, this might seem crazy!) When I was a teacher, I went through two years of training in the Constructivist method of teaching math, and this is one of the fundamentals.

 

I should really write a better post about this on my blog, but in the meantime, here's one that showed my 5 year old learning 3 digit subtraction with regrouping, without algorithms. Now that he's six, he can do this type of problem in his head quite easily. http://teachingmybabytoread.blog.com/2011/03/15/subtraction/ I still haven't taught him the algorithm.

 

On a side note, I think math games have enormous value and are a much better way to learn math facts then drill and kill or flashcards. Here's a post about that: http://teachingmybabytoread.blog.com/2011/04/08/multiplication-memory/

 

Good luck to you! It sounds like you are a really caring parent.

[Staceyshoe]

Thank you all for your responses. It has helped me feel better about this. I think we'll move forward but take frequent breaks to play games using the mental math strategies. I also really love the idea of having him use mental math to check his work.

 

Jenbrdsly, your blog post about the subtraction methods was very open-opening for me. I really wish I had done used your approach from the beginning.

[jenbrdsly]

Thank you all for your responses. It has helped me feel better about this. I think we'll move forward but take frequent breaks to play games using the mental math strategies. I also really love the idea of having him use mental math to check his work.

 

Jenbrdsly, your blog post about the subtraction methods was very open-opening for me. I really wish I had done used your approach from the beginning.

 

I finally got around to posting something that was a bit more in depth about what teaching math from the Constructivist perspective means to me. Hope it helps:

http://teachingmybabytoread.blog.com/math/