Category: General

When to Give a Kid A Calculator

When we teach kids how to drive, we give them a few months in the classroom so they can learn the basics of driving and the rules of the road. Nobody in their right mind puts a teenager behind the wheel and says, while flying down the road, “Now, the brake pedal is the one on the left.”

Not only is it safer, but it makes more sense to teach them outside of the car first. After they pass a competency test then they’re allowed to use the technology (car).

We drop a calculator into the hands of teenagers and ask them to learn math at the same time. There isn’t a safety factor here, but the principle is the same.

There’s a different challenge in learning which buttons to press than learning the reasons behind why you press those buttons. We bring technology into the classroom thinking we’re in service of the children, and instead do them a disservice. We double the concepts and think that one is helping the other. It isn’t.

Begin by teaching user’s manuals.

The use of a calculator, a program or web-based application can be easily taught by teaching children how to read a user’s manual or follow instructions. It’s a device, a tool.

Before they start up their new John Deere riding lawnmower, they should read the user’s manual. Likewise, before they turn on their Hewlett-Packard 32sII, they should bend the spine of its little book.

Math classes and home schools can incorporate user’s manual reading in their curriculum. It will prepare students to learn and understand technology, including calculators and applications.

Introduce the calculator after they have mastered the concept.

Teaching children to do math through calculator use can destroy their sense of confidence in doing it themselves and also make them uncomfortable with the tool. Allow them to fully understand an entire concept in mathematics before giving them technology.

If you want them to learn to graph on a calculator, make sure they can do it with pencil and paper first. Allow a few years between the initial introduction of a concept and learning to make it work on a calculator. This should provide ample time for them to practice it and build their confidence that they can do it without the crutch.

When they are ready, give them the user’s manual to the calculator. Have them do problems by hand on one side of their paper. Have them write the page numbers from the user’s manual and keystrokes for the calculator in a column next to it.

When they have completed this, let them confirm their keystrokes are correct by doing it in the tool. This reinforces the connection between what they have learned, and can do on paper, with what’s being done in the machine.

Do you give your kids a calculator to learn on? Will you continue to do so? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments.

March 19, 2011
1 Word to Eliminate from Your Teaching Vocabulary: Just

Yep – that’s the word: “just.”

That little devil does so much damage to a kid’s math-esteem. His cousin is also a bad guy: “all you have to do is…”

It says to a kid, “It’s so easy, and… what? you can’t do it? GOSH!”

Get rid of it. Let your students charge you a quarter every time you say or write either one.

Say instead: “I find that doing this helps me…”

Or: “How would you feel about doing it this way…?”

If you find math easy, great. Give the kiddos a chance to work through the discovery process, too. And allow them to fail and struggle while supporting them. Just don’t say, “just.”

March 16, 2011
How to Know When a Kid is Confused

When Cassy over at Singapore Math Source commented on my post 7 Ways to Wrangle a Word Problem, it made me think.

Her question to me was, “Why wouldn’t you just rewrite the problem to focus on the appropriate concept?” She suggested that having students restate the problem in their own words without numbers would have them demonstrate that they know what is being asked of them.

Here is the original problem:

The Beebo bird lives in two places in the world. Some live in Texas and some live in Greece. Greek Beebos are about 20 inches high and weigh around seven pounds. There are about thirty-nine thousand Greek Beebos. The total weight of all the beebos in the world is 500,000 pounds. How much do the Texas Beebos weigh altogether?

Here is her suggested rewrite without numbers:

There are only two types of Beebos in the world, Greek and Texan. I know the weight of one Greek Beebo and I know how many Greek Beebos there are in the world. I need to find out how much the Texan Beebos weigh altogether.

On the outset, this seems great. If your kid does this:

It’s more likely your student will do this (especially if they’re struggling or you’re a hired tutor):

Notice the struggle and strain? And notice that both videos show the same thing – the “student” (me) just reading the problem and replacing the numbers with “I know how much…”

Watch students carefully. Listen to their intonations, watch their faces, watch their bodies. Whether you’re in a classroom or one on one, watch! If they got it, you can see it. If their little foreheads are wrinkled and they are tense – stop. They don’t have it. They are guessing. Go back. Try something else.

See? Let me know what you think in the comments.

March 9, 2011
7 Real “How to Succeed in Math” Tips
I bought a handful of math texts at Half Price Books this weekend. I opened up a Basic Mathematics text and the first thing that caught my eye was the intro titled “To the Student: Success in Mathematics.”

“Really?” thought I. As I read it, I grew more and more agitated.

Have these folks spent any time inside a math classroom? Did they pay attention to the students? If so, they should know that the likelihood of a student to do what they suggested is downright ridiculous. So why do we tell students to do it? Why can’t we give them tips that they can and will do? Like these:
1. If you feel comfortable asking questions in class, do it. If not, write your questions down to ask later. You don’t have to ask the instructor, especially if he or she is intimidating. Find a tutor or go to the school’s math lab instead. You don’t have to work with someone you’re uncomfortable with.
2. Read the stuff inside the gray boxes. We know it’s likely you’ll not read the text, but the things inside the gray boxes are really helpful.
3. Before you start on your homework assignment, do something physical or something you can do well. Run a mile, do a load of laundry or play tennis for a half hour. This will remind you of the things you are good at and get your endorphins flowing. It will help you be confident during your homework time.
4. Absorb the lectures, don’t copy them. If you can do it, try to just watch. See how the teacher thinks through a problem. You will gain more from this than from frantically trying to copy everything.
5. If you do take lecture notes, don’t dwell on notes that you can’t figure out. Many times you mis-copy or mis-write things the teacher wrote or said. If it doesn’t make sense, move on.
6. Tear out the back of this book (the part with all the answers) and burn it. It is important that you build your confidence. Checking your work with the magical back of the book just gives you a crutch. And don’t use a calculator to “check your work.” That’s just another crutch.
7. Do the first two problems in every section and subsection. If you can do those, do the last two. If you can do those too, continue to the next subsection. Math isn’t a spectator sport, but it isn’t an elliptical machine either. Do all the problems if you need the practice. And if you have it down, move on.
Give it a shot. Let the students know that what they want to do is okay to do. Let’s quit giving them the B.S. that’s been passed down to us over the last few decades. It’s time to go Math Book 2.0.

Whatcha think? What’d I miss? Let me know in the comments.
March 8, 2011