Math Help?

[AmandaVT]

DS has been cruising along in MM and up until now, he hasn't had any trouble picking up concepts or memorizing math facts. I've noticed over the past few lessons, he's starting to struggle a bit in some areas. He's working through MM 3B right now and he can do the computational work just fine, understands place value, regrouping, etc. The wording on the problems is starting to be above his understanding maybe. We usually do math buddy style and I give him the review and mixed review pages to do on his own. I feel like there's been a jump in how advanced the wording of some of the problems are in 3B. 

 

He had no problem with: An adult airplane ticket costs $655, a child's ticket is $200 cheaper. Find the total cost of two adult and two children's tickets. He did this in his head in about 2 seconds and was able to explain how he got there and wrote it out for me.

 

He had a hard time working out: The distance between town A and town B is 4200 km, from B to C is 3200 km, from C to A is 2200 km. How many more meters is a trip from A to B and back than a trip from C to B and back. I had to walk him through this one. Once I helped him figure out what to do, the actual adding was no problem. But, I don't want to over help if that makes sense. What I did was, change the town names to city names he recognized and made the distances smaller - 50km, 100km, etc. Once he saw that, he figured out how to do the problem and was able to do the original one on his own.

 

I don't want to mess this teaching math thing up. I know he's going to have no problem with the estimating, measuring and weight chapters that are coming up. Same with the start of division and fractions. He's got his multiplication facts down pretty cold - we're still practicing those with our multiplication catch game, but I would say he's got them all down within a second or two and most are automatic.

When do you decide to hang out and do some extra work on a concept vs. thinking, he's 6 and some of the wordings of the longer problems might be a bit over his head still? I'm not getting worried because he struggled with one question - it's been a bunch of the word problems in this book and the puzzle corners too.  (please don't think I'm nuts!)

 

 

[abacus2]

If his problems with MM are this problem, I wouldn't worry about it. Some problems are more challenging and it isn't surprising for a student to need some extra direction on a more challenging problem. If he is having difficulty on a large number of problems, it might make sense to go sideways and do something else for math for 6 months or so before continuing MM.

[OneStepAtATime]

He's doing great!  He's 6.  Goodness, I wouldn't worry.  A large part of math is vocabulary.  Another large part is developmental.  If he starts struggling more with vocabulary keeping working on that.  But if he really starts to get frustrated, upset, really struggling, then like abacus2 posted, it might be time to take a detour for about 6 months to give his brain and his vocabulary some time to catch up developmentally. 

[kateingr]

But, I don't want to over help if that makes sense. What I did was, change the town names to city names he recognized and made the distances smaller - 50km, 100km, etc. Once he saw that, he figured out how to do the problem and was able to do the original one on his own.

 

I don't want to mess this teaching math thing up. I know he's going to have no problem with the estimating, measuring and weight chapters that are coming up. Same with the start of division and fractions. He's got his multiplication facts down pretty cold - we're still practicing those with our multiplication catch game, but I would say he's got them all down within a second or two and most are automatic.

When do you decide to hang out and do some extra work on a concept vs. thinking, he's 6 and some of the wordings of the longer problems might be a bit over his head still? I'm not getting worried because he struggled with one question - it's been a bunch of the word problems in this book and the puzzle corners too.  (please don't think I'm nuts!)

 

You're absolutely not nuts! Figuring out when to help and when to let kids struggle is one of the most important things to figure out as homeschool parents. I don't want my son to be unable to do work without hand-holding, but I also want to teach him well and enjoy the process together. 

 

This is definitely a challenge with kids who are cruising along well in math. Someone recently posted about how we have to keep in mind that when kids are advanced in math, they may be able to handle the math in the curriculum they're using, but they may not be able to handle the other work expectations (like the language, length of problem sets, amount of writing, etc.) I found this explanation so helpful. It's okay to help our advanced kids navigate these work expectations that are above them developmentally, and the way you helped your son understand the difficult wording is a great example of that. (Scribing and making lessons shorter are other examples of that that I've used.) 

 

From what you describe, it sounds like your son is doing great, and the strategy you used to help him understand the tricky problem is right on. Solving a simpler problem is something that he can even apply himself as he gets older (and is sometimes suggested as a strategy for kids solving math competition problems.) The main reason to stop and hang out with a concept is because your child doesn't understand it. When he's mastering the concepts as thoroughly you describe, I don't see any reason to stop because of word problem wording issues. 

 

[AmandaVT]

Thank you! 

 

I'm not worried about him at all OneStepAtATime - I'm thinking about my teaching. He's quite intuitive with math so far and this is the second time we've run into something he didn't understand immediately. The first was a "how many more" lesson back in MM 1 - he could subtract just fine, but got tripped up a bit on the wording. We solved that by using the tiles on our floor and I had him hop from tile to tile to get the concept. I just don't want to keep working through MM and then realize a year from now or something that I did him a disservice by helping him decode the word problems too much. Or do something to cause major math issues down the road. (I tend to overthink things)

 

Abacus2 and Kateingr - thanks for confirming I'm on the right track. We'll keep on and if an occasional word problem tripping him up turns into more, I'll re-evaluate. I'm planning on doing Beast Academy over the summer with him for some fun math time, so I'm hoping that'll fill in any potential holes that exist. For the fall, I am debating between BA or MM - DS really likes MM so far, but he's also liked the bits we've done with BA so far. 

 

Thanks again!!

 

[wintermom]

Your teaching technique of simplifying the numbers and describing step-by-step the process of a word problem sounds great. This is often what needs to be done in order to tackle more challenging problems. As you model these techniques, your ds will eventually be able to do this on his own. It's an on-going process, though, so I wouldn't expect these "holes" to be filled in one summer (perhaps I misunderstood your last post).

[purpleowl]

Your teaching technique of simplifying the numbers and describing step-by-step the process of a word problem sounds great. This is often what needs to be done in order to tackle more challenging problems. 

 

Yep.  Especially since he can then go back and do the original problem after working through the simplified version.  I do the same thing with my DD.

[AmandaVT]

Your teaching technique of simplifying the numbers and describing step-by-step the process of a word problem sounds great. This is often what needs to be done in order to tackle more challenging problems. As you model these techniques, your ds will eventually be able to do this on his own. It's an on-going process, though, so I wouldn't expect these "holes" to be filled in one summer (perhaps I misunderstood your last post).

 

I'm not doing a very good job wording things today, sorry! I meant that I'm hoping that BA will help reinforce some of what he's done already and I'm assuming that the authors will have slightly different ways to approach the problems, so he'll be able to see wordings of problems, for example, that are worded differently then in MM. 

 

I'm glad to hear that reworking the problems in simpler numbers and working through them one step at a time is what other people do too. It seemed "right" to me, but I had this little worry in the back of my head that doing this now will maybe gloss over the fact that he struggled with the wording of the problems and some time down the road it would come back to bite me and I'd have to go back to MM 3B and remediate 2 years from now or something.

[zoobie]

He's 6? And doing MM3? I don't think you should be concerned! He can be advanced in math and still have trouble abstracting the information. He's able to do it once you make it more concrete for him. :) I'd pull back and let him wander and follow some math "rabbit trails" for a while. Zaccaro's Primary Grade Challenge Math works on word problem strategies. There are lots of suggestions for "fun" math things here.

[Bluegoat]

I think with a child who was working ahead like that, if he began to have some problems of that sort, I might tr something that was still in some sense math-like, but not in a linear progression.  Not forever, but maybe for something like six months.  Possibly something integrated with another subject.  It also might be an opportunity to slow down math work for a bit, while spending some extra time on something else that could use more practice or would be a nice addition.