This is a workbook i created for elementary schoolers to learn their polygons by playing the game squares, I’m in the process of revising it could you offer any comments of what else to add
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Just a general comment on your blog, it looks like you’re really passionate about actually teaching kids things and I think that’s awesome. Too much rote in the school system.
What grade(s) do you teach? I’m playing with compass and ruler and the more I play around with it the more I think that it shouldn’t be put off to high school. The compass requires some manual skill to operate but I like the idea of kids doing this sort of manual construction because it teaches you to think visually, physically and abstractly all together. Your blog shows a paper folding exercise to construct an octagon which is precisely what I mean… thinking with your hands and your eyes, not just your head. Also, I think some games based on the slide-rule would be helpful for kids in learning some of the basic math operations… think of two sheets of paper with a slide rule scale printed on the edge and the kids slide the pieces of paper up or down against each other to multiply and divide, which are the simplest operations on the slide rule.
I was home-schooled and I supplement my children’s education on the side (they’re way too young for the stuff above, but I’m thinking ahead!) so I share an amateur interest in children’s education, as well.
Clayton -
Hey Clayton,
I actually teach college math full time, but my passion has always been younger students. My son attends a Montessori School where compasses (as are slide-rules) are used to teach and i believe it works great!
Though i’m not sure of the role mathematics would play in a free market of education, I believe there are some underlining state biases that dumb down students in certain branches of math. For example, most public school students never take courses on probability or statistics, with the state in control of lotteries, it seems like a beneficial state of ignorance for them. I wrote about this on Lew .
Nevertheless, i believe hands on math is more beneficial and more fun to our prisoners of public education, so i aim at killing the ‘drill and kill tactics’ employed today.
More importantly, the big picture behind formulas are never explained. When I was in school I began ignoring lessons and trying to invent the formulas from scratch just by looking at the given problems and using heuristics to reason what the formula should be or inventing alternative formulas with more specific application. I got to the point where acing tests/exams minus random calculation errors became my minimum expectation regardless of attendance history. This may sound like blasphemy by conventional wisdom and I’m not recommending every student try to reinvent the wheel. But, the evidence is in on how general problem solving skill works for specific problems, courtesy of many appearances in front of the local magistrate.
I see basic math incompetence everywhere. Most people can look at a textbook and solve some problem. As soon as the values are hidden in the Where’s Waldo of reality most people have trouble seeing a striped shirt from a rock. An example is the wasted vote hypothesis. Everyone and his mother believes that voting for a party that has no chance of winning is a waste of vote compared to otherwise. Though the math is basic, homeless beggars and academics alike seem confounded about the fact that 1 vote is only a marginal factor if the difference in final tally is 1 or 0. It boggles my mind.