Fantastic New Ways to Teach Math

“The Fantastic New Ways to Teach Math That Most Schools Aren’t Even Using,” is the title of an op-ed piece I recently read in the Hechinger Report. Penned by Corey Drake, it highlights a “list of teaching practices to support student learning, and connect to children’s prior understandings and out-of-school experiences, providing opportunities for children to make sense of, and talk about mathematics, promoting the use of mental mathematics based on patterns in our number system.” Basically, four practices were highlighted, which can be employed by teachers and parents alike, and I’ve added some of my own thinking to these practices:

1. Ask students “why” at least once every day.  Why questions might include:  Why did that strategy work?  Why did that strategy make sense to you? Would your strategy work all of the time? Why? Why not?  (Encourage children to “poke holes” into their own thinking).
2. Instead of just looking for right or wrong answers, focus on what was right about a student’s work or thinking. Use that information as the starting point for new learning, question posing, or “what-iffing”. Encourage students to use decide and defend strategies about their work, critiquing their own thinking.
3. Use a textbook (or worksheets) only as a tool, looking for meaningful tasks in the work. Focus instead on problems with real-world (or real-home or real-classroom) applications. Students are more likely to engage in problems with a purpose, and to retain that learning because it was grounded in practicality.
4. Provide at least one opportunity each day for “mental math.”  No calculators, no paper or pencil, no computers are allowed. Students must rely on their brain, mental math strategies/mathematical images that they’ve discovered, and their ability to “vet” their own answers for correctness.  This promotes creativity, decision-making, problem-solving, creativity, and eventually a love of mathematics -- becoming a mathemagician, if you will.

After reading this article and thinking about gifted math students, I chatted with one of my nephews, who is a mathematics professor at Harvard University.  I asked him to evaluate these strategies, and to offer any additional strategies for students gifted in math.  After consulting with fellow professors and students (he’s a thorough researcher), he answered, “Never make them work alone. When we work in groups, or with a partner, we have our biggest AHAs. We challenge each other’s thinking, and we pose new problems that we never thought possible. This is how we grow.”
So what’s your perspective?  How did you learn math? How is your child learning math? How are your students learning math? How can you provide stretch learning and challenges for your gifted mathematicians? And how can you grow your own perspective about learning math?

Jacquelyn Drummer
Past President - WATG