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“There is a great danger in the present day lest science- teaching should degenerate into the accumulation of disconnected facts and unexplained formulae, which burden the memory without cultivating the understanding.” ~J. D. Everett [In the preface to his 1873 English translation of Elementary Treatise on Natural Philosophy by A Privat Deschanel. (D. Appleton and Co.)]
Unhappily this is EXACTLY what has happened with mathematics education. The whole of mathematics has been broken down into tiny parts and because of this the whole picture is little understood. The more I am forced to teach out of text books whose well meaning authors have fragmented math beyond the basic operations into such disjointed parts that students basically memorize enough to past the test and then forget it, the more I see this is true. This is compounded by teachers who are pressured into “teaching for the standardized tests” not teaching for deeper understanding. The students understand it well enough to pass the test…often with a low “C”.
Basic concepts like, math is a language, numbers are made up of other numbers, and all we can do with math is count, are lost. Concept based teaching using manipulatives makes math fun and easy and highly understandable, to the point that even very young children can do so called “higher math” with ease. Find Crewton Ramone’s Blog Of Math and there you will see six and seven year old students doing algebra, making change for $100.00, videos and more. Best of all they don’t know it’s not supposed to be easy!
The idea is to teach math like a language, using basic concepts that build a solid foundation for the next set of concepts that build a solid foundation for the next set of concepts and so on. Working your way through math using concepts that increase in degree of difficulty slowly but surely while the student is in a situation where they cannot fail is a sure fire method for success. Because most concept based teaching uses manipulatives and because text does not lend itself to mathematical notation trying to describe it in detail in a short article like this is like trying to describe blue to a blind man. You have to see it to really get a grasp of what I’m talking about. There are several systems that you might look into to assist in he math education of your child. Any Montessori based system like Mortensen More than Math or Math-U-See will generally be concept based, but the primary complaint I hear from parents and teachers especially with Mortensen Math is that they don’t know how to use these systems. This is often the case with many base ten manipulative sets: they don’t come with enough instruction so that they can be used to their fullest extent.
At Crewton Ramone’s House of Math you can SEE how to use base ten blocks to do a whole lot more than just teach counting. You will find many concept based lessons for teaching basic operations, algebra and more that can be used with any set of base ten blocks.
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Tags: math
Posted in Primary Education · January 30th, 2010 · Comments (0)
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