Sing a Song of Sixpence - early math the right way

Start math early, too, not just reading - early math the right way 
(and stay away from Common Core)!

Wise parents who want to raise successful children will start at home before kindergarten to give their children a good foundation in mathematical concepts, patterning, and the WHY behind adding and subtracting. As their children age, proactive purposeful parents will also continue to teach the foundations to multiplying, dividing, fractions, and "super-ones," which are key to algebraic understanding.

Start your child’s gifted math journey early in the preschool years. Do more than just counting and the number names. Play adding and subtracting games with real objects such as toys. Play with puzzles. Create repeating patterns with construction paper cut into different shapes. More ideas further on.

Have you ever thought about the history of math? It took centuries for math to develop to the point of Sir Isaac Newton’s calculus. And many proofs and discoveries have been made since then. Each new math axiom or law was built upon the principles of the previous ones. Two truths are evident here.

First, no one can possibly self-discover all the mathematical truths in one lifetime. Math must be taught by someone who already knows it, who has learned what previous mathematicians discovered, and can pass that knowledge on. Total student-led discovery would never lead to higher-level math skills. There isn’t enough time. (More about teacher-oriented education vs. student-oriented education has been discussed in previous chapters.)

Second, math must be learned starting with the simplest concepts then building upon them. The value of each number must be known, as well as its relationship to other numbers. Children need to know why eight minus five equals three, see it and relate it to real objects. Later, they memorize the number equations, but first they must see the reason. Any child could be given a calculator and learn to punch in 8-5=3 to get an answer, but she’d never become a real mathematician, lacking the understanding of what that number relationship means. For that matter, she could also punch in the logarithm (log) key for a number, but what would the answer mean? What is an inverse exponent? Where is it used?

It is the same with reading. The words that we speak are strings of sounds. Children must learn to understand the individual sounds (phonics). Then they must learn the relationships between different sounds, such as diphthongs and double-vowels. Sound-strings become syllables, and syllable-strings become words. Then it all makes sense and to how the written word relates to the spoken word – by sounds. Later children memorize the whole words, but first they must see the reason. Teaching a child to sight-read without phonics knowledge is like teaching a child to use a calculator without number knowledge. It’s basically worthless when a real problem arises.

Interestingly, children who learn sight-word reading often struggle with numbers, too, even mixing up letters for numbers and vice versa. Phonics readers do not. For some reason, learning the individual sounds of letters also makes it easier to learn numbers and keep the two categories separate. But to a sight-reader, 600+5 might look like boots, which can be very confusing. Empower your child to do well in both math and reading by teaching him phonics and numbers the right way.

There are philosophies where math stories are taught as templates and the students just fill in the numbers. But when they come to a real-life problem that doesn’t seem to fit the templates, they are lost. These students receive high math scores and do well as long as the math fits the templates.

However, those students who are taught to think about the math relationships and patterns, not just set templates, can ‘think outside the box.’ When they come upon an unfamiliar problem, they are more likely to solve it using thinking skills learned by proper math instruction. This is the goal – to think.

It is important with both math and reading to understand the WHY and to see the patterns. Being able to see patterns is the key to higher-level thinking skills. Parents can help their children’s minds learn to notice patterns with hands-on activities such as crocheting, knitting, cooking, 3-D models, mechanics, carpentry, puzzles, music and music theory, and a myriad of arts, which actually all help math understanding. Start early.

Giving children the foundation of the WHY behind numbers and letters in a direct manner is the best way to guarantee that they will grasp the concepts easily and progress rapidly, not only to competency but to excellence and intelligence. What better gift could a parent give a child?

Some fun history about the number symbols we use:

How numerals 0 - 9 got their shape! 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

“Do you know why numbers look like they do? Someone, at some point in time, had to create their shapes and meaning. Watch this short presentation and then you will know how our Arabic numbers were originally created a very long time ago and what logic the people that created them used to determine their shapes. It is really very simple and quite creative!

“You have to admire the intelligence of a person or people that created something so simple and perfect that it has lasted for thousands and thousands of years and will probably never change.

“When the presentation gets to the number "seven" you will notice that the 7 has a line through the middle of it. That was the way the Arabic 7 was originally written, and in Europe and certain other areas they still write the 7 that way. Also, in the military, they commonly write it that way. The nine has a kind of curly tail on it that has been reduced, for the most part nowadays, to a simple curve, but the logic involved still applies.

“The Arabs popularized these algorithms, but their origin goes back to the Phoenicians that used them to count and do their commercial business. Look at these algorithms (number symbols) below, written in their primitive form. These are angles!”

(I have no idea whom to credit with this presentation. It came in an email with no references to the originator, but the last slide said, “Share it with your friends…”).

 

This was much quicker and simpler than Roman numerals, so it became the way most of the world wrote numbers. And it used the base-ten system (ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, etc.), which was also easier.

Boost your child's math intelligence with family activities. We’ve been talking about the importance of math activities in the family to boost children’s math abilities. Another great resource for parents to use with their children is the book, Family Math, by Jean Kerr Stenmark (1986).
http://www.amazon.com/Family-Math-Equals-Jean-Stenmark/dp/0912511060/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249162842&sr=1-1.

This book has many fun ideas and activities that parents and children can do together at home. You don’t have to be a home-schooler, or a stay-at-home mom, to increase your child’s mathematical intelligence. Even working moms can find time to do these math games and activities at home, creating precious, quality family time.

A child’s math knowledge should be developed before school age and augmented during school years. It’s just as important for children to feel confident and successful in math as reading. This helps them stay at the head of the class and not fall behind a little more each year. There are many different types of intelligence and a child may be gifted more in one area than another. Regardless, all areas of learning can be enhanced and improved when parents try things at home.

Another book by Jean Kerr Stenmark, Family Math for Young Children (1997), is targeted for younger children. http://www.amazon.com/Family-Math-Young-Children-Comparing/dp/0912511273/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249162842&sr=1-2. Give these resources a try, and remember to have no power struggles while guiding your children.

In the Kansas City area, there are math competitions and fun groups called Math Olympiads and Math Kangaroo, sponsored by Noetic Learning and the University of Kansas. You can find similar programs in your area. The math challenges are a great way to sharpen your child’s skills. The Johnson County Community College also supports Math Kangaroo. Colleges in your area probably do, too.

Noetic Learning helps keep kids’ minds sharp over summer with their Leap Ahead program. Go to http://www.noetic-learning.com/gifted. Some programs require a fee. For more information contact noetic.learning@gmail.com by email.

How to help your child excel at math. Did you know that the earlier a child learns basic concepts, the greater her capacity for learning later? Children learn best from their own parents, not from pre-schools nor kindergartens. The best way to develop your child’s gifts is to start early at home. Of course, the learning must be joyful, without power struggles. In many areas, public school math curricula have the same flaws as their reading curricula, based on theories that don’t work.

Teaching math early in the right way is as important as reading early the right way.  So, I asked math advocate Laurie Rogers what are some of the best math resources that parents can use at home, before and during school years. They would like to pass on some of the best practices to you.

These materials can be used as supplements to public and private school, or for home school:

“Bits of Intelligence®” flash cards, by Dr. Glenn Doman, http://www.gentlerevolution.com/ for math products.

“A-Beka” math curriculum from Pensacola, FL. Of course parents must purchase the curriculum materials for each grade level. http://www.abeka.com.

 “Saxon Math,” by John Saxon, available on www.Amazon.com  secondhand marketplace and eBay. It's important to get the texts, tests and solution manuals of the same publish date, otherwise the problems and solutions don't match. Additionally, the earlier texts are better - more traditional in nature. Later texts sometimes have a bit of "investigating" in them. Just skip that.

“Singapore Math,” from www.singaporemath.com. Get the full set - the workbook, textbook, homeschooling parent's guide, and the solutions manual. The solutions manual covers several years at once. A full year - the A and B - is relatively inexpensive to buy new from www.Singaporemath.com.

Why is it necessary to supplement and/or teach math at home? Many public schools use “reform” texts such as Connected Mathematics - a truly awful program. They also use the useless "spiral" approach instead of referring back to previously learned concepts.

Also beware of other “reform” texts like "Investigations in Number, Data and Space." Some children are unfortunately saddled with Core-Plus and the loopy way Core-Plus approaches graphs. The Common Core and reform programs have proven not to work and they are putting our children further and further behind in this world of technological jobs.

Don't hurry. Keep it light and funny whenever possible.

Math advocate Laurie Rogers writes, “In one six-month period, our [6th-grade] daughter went through two Saxon texts, and Singapore Math 5A (twice), 5B, 6A and 6B -- plus many practice problems I gave her. It sounds like a lot, but we didn't push her. We trusted her to do what she could, and we didn't ask her to work in groups [nor] to teach it to herself. Our method was very efficient. In return, she took it seriously and did not lollygag. Her teachers were amazed at what she did.  They just about fell over when we showed them the binders of work. I think it might have been a wake-up call for a few of them.”

Laurie H. Rogers, lrogers@saferchild.org, founder of Safer Child, Inc., http://www.saferchild.org and "Betrayed" - a blog on education, http://betrayed-whyeducationisfailing.blogspot.com/.

http://thegodfreymethod.com

Sing a Song of Sixpence: how parents can beat the odds of math learning with their children

Boost your child's math intelligence! How you beat the odds with your child:

               I was doing a radio interview in November 2009 when the radio host, Michael Ray Dresser (Dresser After Dark), made a parallel between phonics instruction and proper math instruction. Phonics teaches the WHY behind the reading and good math teaches the WHY behind the math. Much of the ‘reform’ math is like horrid sight-reading, where a child learns the sentence 3+4=7 by sight (or with a calculator) without learning the basic concepts underneath, that each number represents a specific amount and how those amounts regroup.

               It has come to my attention that the public educational system holds children back not only in reading, but in math as well. I strongly recommend that parents do math instruction at home long before, and during, school age. Parent involvement is absolutely necessary for our children to join the technology workforce of the future, regardless of using public, private, or home school.

               Obviously, ‘Reform’ philosophies have done for math what the Whole Language fiasco did for reading. [Note: Common Core has now ruined math exponentially more than reform math ever thought of!]

Math advocates such as Laurie Rogers of the Safer Child organization http://www.saferchild.org/ have been trying to put the WHY back into public school math, but the curriculum coordinators, college boards, textbook publishers, and government aren’t listening. Parents are the key to turning around the education fiasco for our children. Laurie Rogers is absolutely brilliant about the problems in public math instruction. To quote from her article, Rogers, Laurie. (July, 2009). "Why administrators don't listen." July 5, 2009, on Education News at http://ednews.org/articles/why-administrators-dont-listen-.html:

               “A common complaint among math advocates is that the education establishment continually rejects pertinent data and valid research on how ‘reform’ mathematics curricula are deeply, fatally flawed.”

               “It’s like watching a completely preventable traffic accident,” I’ve said. “How do they not see it? Why won't they listen to reason?”

               “Many a public schools persists with its ‘reform’ math curricula despite all contrary evidence from the district, state and nation – and despite distressing results (a scary, black hole of dropouts, remediation and failed tests).”

               “If the data and research don’t support these curricula, and the entire nation has found that a steady diet of ‘reform’ leads to math incompetence… what is the real reason for their continued use? …Infiltrate public education, teach the children to think conceptually about nothing, and then pretend to fret as the country falls to its knees. It’s the perfect crime: Infiltrate public education, teach the children to think conceptually about nothing, and then pretend to fret as the country falls to its knees."

               Everyone loves the word ‘change,’ but change is not always for the better. To quote the experts:

               “Another lesson of [Project Follow Through] is that educational innovations do not always work better than what they replace. Many might say that we do not need an experiment to prove that, but it needs to be mentioned because education has just come through a period in which the not-always-stated assumption was that any change was for the better. The result was a climate in which those responsible for the changes did not worry too much about the consequences. The PFT evaluation and other recent evaluations should temper our expectations.” (p. 179-181, Wisler, Burns, & Iwamoto, 1978).

               “The most expensive educational experiment in the world [PFT] showed that change alone will not improve education. Yet change for the sake of change is the major theme of the current educational reform effort. Improving education requires more thought than simply making changes.” (Bonnie Grossen, editor, University of Oregon).

               Giving children the foundation of the WHY behind numbers and letters in a direct manner is the best way to guarantee that they will grasp the concepts easily and progress rapidly, not only to competency but to excellence and intelligence. Wise parents who want to raise successful children will start at home before kindergarten to give their children a good foundation in mathematical concepts, patterning, and the WHY behind the math.

Laurie Rogers also wrote, “No advocate has the answer [to public education acceptance of reform math], although there are suspicions. Some of the possibilities I’ve heard include these:

·        Kickbacks from [textbook] publishers

·        Overly friendly relationships with publishers

·        College Board pressure

·        Ignorance

·        Stupidity

·        Herd mentality

·        Indoctrination

·        Ego

·        Habit

·        Personal comfort

·        Political philosophy

·        Ennui

What better gift could a parent give a child? Only parents can turn education around for their children, and they must start at home. Yes, even busy working parents. If I did it with a full-time job and 15 children, anyone can do it. Let me show you how. More to come!

http://thegodfreymethod.com