I Love Math Season is here!
A vignette: It is early February, 2013. Mr. Choi and Mr. Lawrence have just handed out the fourth and last I Love Math problem of the year. It is an especially challenging problem, and we were not sure how the Eighth graders would handle it. There was a silence in the room. Were students stunned? discouraged? overwhelmed?
Within about a minute, the silence began to break. Students began asking their partners some questions. Ideas began to be shared. One student got some art materials to build a model of the problem. Another was sketching images to share with his teammates. After 10 minutes the room was buzzing with energy and ideas.
Success!
Not one student said: "I don't know what to do." or "We've never done something like this before. " or "You never taught us this." No one sat back. No one tuned out.
This is what all of us who teach math at Mustard Seed School hope for. We work hard to develop resourcefulness in our students. We design curriculum to build persistence and creativity. When students are stumped (and sometimes they will be, in school and in life), we hope that they have a broad array of strategies that they have used successfully in the past.
I Love Math season is a time when we work explicitly on these things, in a concentrated way. To the students, it all looks very playful and fun. That is as it should be.
Yet the goals are very serious. Some of our goals have to do with student attitudes. Even when stuck, can they be positive and optimistic? Do they expect math to be be interesting? Do they expect to find satisfaction from a beautiful, creative solution? If you want to read more about this, the two most recent postings in the I Love Math MSS blog explain how we approach healthy attitudes. Here is the link http://ilovemathmss.blogspot.com
We also have goals for learning specific math content. We spend months scouring math texts for problems that have just right amount of challenge for the Middle School level, and at the same time deal with math content worthy of deep consideration. The four problems chosen for this year go to the heart of some of the most important topics for Middle School students:
fractions
ratios
rates
relative rates
boundaries (the answer must be less than x, but greater than y)
square numbers
the distributive law
pattern recognition
probability
randomness
exponential growth
modeling
Ask your child about their experiences with the I Love Math problems, and engage them in conversations. The problems will be posted at the link above, and they are an excellent way for you to enjoy a math conversation with your child. No need to find a solution, just a conversation can be an important part of the process.
Within about a minute, the silence began to break. Students began asking their partners some questions. Ideas began to be shared. One student got some art materials to build a model of the problem. Another was sketching images to share with his teammates. After 10 minutes the room was buzzing with energy and ideas.
Success!
Not one student said: "I don't know what to do." or "We've never done something like this before. " or "You never taught us this." No one sat back. No one tuned out.
This is what all of us who teach math at Mustard Seed School hope for. We work hard to develop resourcefulness in our students. We design curriculum to build persistence and creativity. When students are stumped (and sometimes they will be, in school and in life), we hope that they have a broad array of strategies that they have used successfully in the past.
I Love Math season is a time when we work explicitly on these things, in a concentrated way. To the students, it all looks very playful and fun. That is as it should be.
Yet the goals are very serious. Some of our goals have to do with student attitudes. Even when stuck, can they be positive and optimistic? Do they expect math to be be interesting? Do they expect to find satisfaction from a beautiful, creative solution? If you want to read more about this, the two most recent postings in the I Love Math MSS blog explain how we approach healthy attitudes. Here is the link http://ilovemathmss.blogspot.com
We also have goals for learning specific math content. We spend months scouring math texts for problems that have just right amount of challenge for the Middle School level, and at the same time deal with math content worthy of deep consideration. The four problems chosen for this year go to the heart of some of the most important topics for Middle School students:
fractions
ratios
rates
relative rates
boundaries (the answer must be less than x, but greater than y)
square numbers
the distributive law
pattern recognition
probability
randomness
exponential growth
modeling
Ask your child about their experiences with the I Love Math problems, and engage them in conversations. The problems will be posted at the link above, and they are an excellent way for you to enjoy a math conversation with your child. No need to find a solution, just a conversation can be an important part of the process.