Make Easy, Low-cost Math Journals
Nov 27, 2011 23:05 Filed in:
Math
Education
If you’d like to learn how to do the same, please visit this link that tells you how to do it, and also gives a few tips about using math journals in your classroom. If you have other ideas about how to use math journals, please leave them in the comments below.
Thanks for reading!
Comments
Book Review: The Absolute Value of Mike (and Dyscalculia)
When I saw this book
at the library,
I was drawn directly to it. Why? For one thing, my post on
dyscalculia and teaching math is one of my most popular posts ever.
For another, I am always seeking good children’s books with
mathematics themes to enhance my teaching or recommend to students.
Finally, given that the theme of dyscalculia is such a hot topic, I
thought I might be able to learn more about it, as I have done with
books about people on the autistic spectrum, such as
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
.So it was with great eagerness that I devoured this book. And it is with mixed feelings that I write this review. Therefore, I thought it would be best to write it in two parts, the first about its literary value, and the second about its value in understanding what dyscalculia means.
Part 1: Literary Value
This book has a lot going for it. For one thing, the characters are all unique and unconventional. While some other reviewers have criticized them as being too strange, I liked them because such people do exist, and reading about characters like these portrayed in positive ways can help promote tolerance and understanding.
Another strength is the plot, which compelled me to keep reading. I found it gripping, moving, and believable in its own world. It was also well written, which is only to be expected from a National Book Award winner. I enjoyed the story tremendously.
However...
Part 2: Representation of Dyscalculia
First of all, a disclaimer: I am not an expert in dyscalculia. I have done some reading, and I have worked in math for many years with a variety of students, some of whom struggle with math due to poor math teaching or different learning styles, and a few who genuinely could not work with numbers. Some had parents who hired me as a private tutor precisely because they had such a struggle with math.
That being said, I do understand some things about dyscalculia. I know that it can result in the inability to have number sense, to know how to do some calculations one day and forget the next, perhaps to have no sense of time or money, poor sense of direction, and/or not much working memory. You can read more about it in my entry titled "Dyscalculia and Teaching Math."
Therefore, I expected to see at least one of these struggles shown in the main character. Instead, Mike was able to multiply and divide large numbers in his head. For example, on p. 229:
“Good luck getting twenty dollars in one week! Even I could do the math - that was almost three thousand a day.”
Mike was able to keep appointments on time, manipulated numbers in his head, and while he got lost in a new town a few times, who doesn’t? The inability to read maps does not necessarily imply dyscalculia, and he always managed to find his way in the end.
The central conflict of the story is Mike’s relationship with his father, who is a genius in the math and sciences, and who wants his son to succeed in these too. However, the father has a great deal of trouble empathizing, relating to his son, understanding people in general, and being able to converse outside of his own areas of expertise. In short, Erskine has done a beautiful job of characterizing a man with a recognizably typical autistic spectrum disorder, without ever naming it. Mike’s great-aunt Moo even describes oddities in the father’s childhood behavior to confirm to us that these strange behaviors aren’t only due to grief from Mike’s mother’s death, or some other lifetime trauma.
Conclusion
Rather than dyscalculia, Erskine has characterized a boy who can manage the basics of math, but for whom advanced math holds no interest or appeal. That is true for a much larger segment of the population than those with dyscalculia! If the character did have dyscalculia, I wish she would have done as excellent a job in showing it in the character as she did with the father’s autistic behaviors. Granted, dyscalculia isn’t as well understood or “popular,” but I really think the book would have benefitted from an expert’s review before publication. I think marketing it as a book that addresses the topic of dyscalculia is misleading and could lead to a lot of popular misdiagnosis or self diagnosis.
Recommended Resources:
Since I can't recommend this book for learning about dyscalculia, here are a few resources I can recommend. Please add yours below in the comments. Also, if you disagree with my assessment, I would love to hear your point of view; I want to learn as much as I can about this topic.
My Thirteenth Winter: A Memoir
http://www.dyscalculiaforum.com/
"Fight at Bed": Fourth Grade Guest Blogger
Oct 10, 2011 21:02 Filed in:
Writing | Guest
blogger
While I work on a lengthy blog post with a book review, here is a poem from one of my young writing students. His name is Peter (Engish name), and he is a fourth grade non-native English speaker. He and his brother were born in South Korea and lived for two years in Japan before moving to the US a few years ago. They meet with me once a week for math and English tutoring. Peter has a great sense of humor, and I am honored that he let me publish his poem here.
Fight at Bed
I fight at bed.
I fight at bed with my brother.
He puts his foot on my chin.
I wake up and hit his leg.
When I wake up his foot is on my chin again.
I hit him again.
I get very mad.
I get very very mad.
New Presentations for the Fall
I will also be offering six Singapore Math full-day workshops this fall, starting in October and ending in December. The schedule and links to register for those, and for the conference, are at the bottom of my Professional Development page. If you come, be sure to tell me you saw this website, and you will receive a special little gift!
Review: Number Bonds Software for Singapore Math
The software, intended for grades K-2, is a simple Flash-based program. The CD comes with installers for both Mac OS and Windows. The program is small and snappy, even on older or slower computers; I have tried it on a first-generation Macbook Pro as well as two netbooks. I have used the software with young students and demonstrated it in front of a group of teachers, and this is what we found.
The program comes with four different games, ranging from very basic to more advanced. In the first game, Pond Bonds, children must move frogs to the appropriate lily pad to form correct number bonds. In the second game, Bird Bonds, the purpose is to move the appropriate bird to the right hole in the birdhouse. In this one, each bird is labeled with a number. The third game, Which Number, shows number bonds with one of the numbers missing; students must click on the correct number to complete the bond. The final game, Which Bond, gives students a number at the top of the screen, with two number bonds below. The student must click on the correct question mark where the top number should go.
The games follow the progression of Concrete > Pictorial > Abstract, which is known to lead to student success. Picking up a kicking frog and dropping it on the lily pad, or hearing it splash in the water, triggers concrete sensory feedback, especially when used with a touch screen or interactive white board. Moving birds with numbers on them starts to combine the concrete with the abstract, and the shapes of the holes in the birdhouse mirror the shapes of the number bonds in the next levels. The final two levels use the pictorial and abstract levels to good effect.
The software has several options for customization. For each game, you can set a numerical range, a time limit, and a number of players. Be aware, though, that if you go with the defaults, it may be a recipe for failure; the time limit is set to lowest, and the numbers are set to the highest range, meaning even a very fast adult can’t get a very high score. I wish the defaults had been reversed. On the other hand, if you need to move students quickly through stations, the fast pace can be good. The fastest time may not allow adequate time for learning, though. Once you set the settings for a game, they stay that way until you change them.
One area where this software is lacking is educational feedback for the player. On the early games, if you miss a question, you can go back and try again, but you don’t receive any clues about what went wrong. On the higher games, if you miss one, too bad; you can’t even try again. I would like to see some sort of helpful feedback when mistakes are made.
When you have one player set, the score for the player is displayed at the end of the game. For more players, the others have to sit through each entire set until the scores are displayed at the end. I think more interactive game play would be nice. There is no way to save scores in the software, either. I would recommend that teachers create individual score sheets for students to keep track of their scores and how they improve over time, so they compete against themselves, not against others.
Since the software is Flash-based, it cannot run on iOS devices. I hope they develop a version for that platform soon.
Conclusion: Highly Recommended
Number Bonds is a simple, inexpensive software package that can provide extra addition and subtraction practice in the classroom or at home. Children find it fun and engaging, and it provides good composing and decomposing practice, as well as mental addition and subtraction. I would use it for a wider age range of children; it can be helpful for differentiating, like with more advanced preschoolers and upper elementary students who need foundational number bond practice. It would be nice if the software had a few more features, but I’m sure those features would take away from the software’s speedy response on older hardware. For best results, it should be run on a touch device, so it would be great if it could be installed on iOS or Android in the future.
Pros:
Not expensive
Site license available
Small and fast
Good educational design (concrete > pictorial > abstract)
Fun for children
Range of levels and challenges
Compatible with a wide range of desktops and laptops
Singapore math-based!
Cons:
Not enough feedback on mistakes
Can’t save score data
Settings need to be reset when first played
Not a true multiplayer game
Needs teacher introduction to be most effective (not stand-alone)
Teachers need training to make the most of it, but program-based help is minimal
Writing How-To Essays & Site Updates
Sep 06, 2011 23:20 Filed in:
Writing
This type of writing, the how-to essay, is great for students to practice order words (first, next, then, finally), as well as to understand how to organize their work so it makes sense. See an example of a second-grade student’s how-to essay here.
My site has been going through some growing pains as a software update was applied, and some kinks are still being worked out from that. The programs for children have been updated; be sure to check that page for great learning opportunities this fall! Thank you for your patience as I continue to try to make everything work smoothly.
NCTM Illuminations 2011
I was pleased to see recently that the workshop received a couple of mentions on the web. One is on the thinkfinity site, which is run by Verizon and which I first joined after attending ISTE 2011. The other is from one of the participants, who wrote a blog post mentioning it.
If you are interested in seeing what I can offer your school, please be sure to contact me.
Musical Proofreading: A Different Approach to Teaching Punctuation
Sep 06, 2011 20:16 Filed in:
Writing | US
Education
This post was originally published on the Patch on August 5, 2011.
Even though this sounds simple, he had a hard time determining where a period should go. Instead, he sometimes added a comma instead or skipped a period entirely.
After trying several approaches to help him, a new thought occurred to me. “Listen to the music of the words,” I said. I compared punctuation to rests in musical notation, with which he has some experience. “Commas are like short rests, and periods are like long rests.”
I then hummed the paragraph without the words for him once, and then again while pointing to the words I was humming so he could follow along. He said it was almost like he could hear me saying the sentences. I said, “Yes, the music and rhythm of language help give it meaning.” To show some contrast, I read the same paragraph in an absolute monotone with no pauses for punctuation whatsoever. “Much more boring, isn’t it?” I said, and he agreed.
With this new tool under his belt, my student was able to successfully detect when to add periods in the rest of the paragraph. He continues to use this tool months later.
I have taught this method to other struggling students, and it’s helped them, too. A search for similar methods didn’t turn up anything online, so I wonder if this is a new idea. I hope this way to use “musical intelligence” adds another useful tool to other writing teachers’ tool kits!
ISTE 2011: On my way
Jun 26, 2011 21:00 Filed in:
Technology
| Math
Education
http://www.isteconference.org/ISTE/2011/program/search_results_details.php?sessionid=60744211
If you are a math teacher or homeschooling parent and haven’t seen their free fraction tools yet, please do so at http://conceptuamath.com. The tools are extremely intuitive and valuable, work great with a white board or tablet (but not iPads), and have helped many children understand how fractions work. They are also very compatible with Singapore Math.
Story Board Game
Jun 08, 2011 13:33 Filed in:
Writing
Nearly all writers have experienced writer’s block. There are many ways to overcome it, including by using a variety of prompts. I have used Rory's Story Cubes
, which the
students and I love, writing kits, and more.
Today an idea came to me to make a board game with writing prompts. My students have had fun and have written good stories while playing it. Please feel free to download the game and use it as you please. You may even find a way to use it in conjunction with the story cubes. Enjoy!