Thursday, April 28, 2016

Silly rabbit tricks are for kids! Or are they?

As we come into another testing season, I am reminded of my first year teaching mathematics in the public school classroom. As a naïve new teacher, I had every confidence that my 7th graders were going to knock the socks off the state assessment. I had spent the entire year giving my math students the tools they needed to be successful on the state exam; furthermore, I felt I had prepared them for their future math classes. I thoroughly taught them every math trick
I had picked up on in my teacher prep courses and from veteran teachers willing to share them  on my campus.


The butterfly method for adding and subtracting fractions.
Check.

The bat and ball method for solving proportions.
Check.

The alligator eats the larger number for comparing rational numbers.  
Check.

Keep change flip to multiply fractions.
Check.

I quickly realized that there are so many tricks that it could be quite confusing for the students. In short, I may have been doing more harm than good. If I were a doctor I may have been cited for not living up to the Hippocratic Oath.  But what if I teach my students all the necessary rules and algorithms to solve math problems? Is that any better?  Although well intended, in reality I felt that even following logical rules was more focused on teaching students to follow instructions rather than providing a pathway to become mathematicians.

Where did I lose my way?  I was turning my students into robots that have an operating system, able only to do simple tasks like memorization of facts and tedious procedures. What about critical thinking, applying prior learning to new experiences, and being able clearly explain reasoning?

The argument is made that we don’t have enough time to do those types of things, but a good friend of mine always responds, "We don't have time not to do it." Initially, the time spent is greater, but the benefits are also greater. Teaching students conceptually allows them to retain more and learn more, thus allowing for fewer misconceptions when introducing new content from year to year.

“But what about the yearly state assessment?” you ask. Having a solid conceptual foundation, I believe, is far more useful than a bag of tricks. If we have worked with our students on reasoning practices, explaining their thinking, and problem solving tools, won’t our students at the very least confidently eliminate unreasonable answer choices on any given assessment?  Perhaps students will even reason all the way through a given math problem. 


I have recently started reading "What's Math Got to Do with It?" by Jo Boaler.  In the book she tries to answer the exact question we have raised, saying, "It [math] has a lot to do with children having low self esteem throughout their lives because they are made to feel bad in math classes; it also has a lot to do with children not enjoying school as they are made to sit through uninspiring lessons, and it has a lot to do with the future of the country, given that we urgently need more mathematical people to help with jobs in science, medicine, technology, and other fields."

Let me end by challenging myself and other math teachers to reflect on the lasting impact we have on our students when we reduce the beauty of math to a collection of tricks.  I believe this quote from the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science sums it up quite nicely.  "Show a child some tricks and he will survive this week’s math lesson. Teach a child to think critically and his mind will thrive for a lifetime."


1 comment:

  1. Check out the book written collaboratively by math teachers online: Nix the Tricks! http://nixthetricks.com/

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