elementary school math-fact challenges

[chhotii]

Here's what I don't get: I've been told that the MCAS is un-timed. (Is this true?)

If this is so, why is there so much emphasis on doing the math-fact sheets as fast as possible? Timing them and so forth? For some kids, rising to the challenge will work. But there are some kids (such as Sophia, and at least one other kid you know...) for whom the timer causes so much activation of the sympathetic nervous system that it impairs both performance and learning. In a big way.

Mathematicians are not judged on speed. So why is math treated like a track event in 2nd grade?

Comments

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

There are certainly other ways to encourage memorization though.

That's likely true, but is there a way to test for memorization?

I don't know if it has changed again, but for a while the popular method of teaching math was oriented toward rediscovering what was already known rather than toward memorizing it. That environment wouldn't encourage memorization.

[chhotii.livejournal.com]

but is there a way to test for memorization?

Probably not. Where do you draw the line between memorization and a really fast algorithm? For example, my boss, who is no spring chicken and a math wiz and the P.I. of his own lab, claims that (based on self-introspection) he doesn't actually have 6+8 memorized. When he sees 6+8, his brain does:
6+8
=4+2+8
=4+10
=14

I do this too. So I've been trying to teach Sophia to manipulate addition problems using "ten buddies" when she's stuck. But I don't really believe that my boss really needs to do this. I think that some of us just have a knee-jerk need to manipulate numbers. But how could you ever tell for sure?

[gosling.livejournal.com]

I do this too. Also, I was so terrible at the "speed and accuracy" (which was really speed) tests in the early elementary years that it was basically assumed I had no math ability at all, an assumption I did not actually think to question until many, many years later.

(I will note that my father, who was a quite competent physicist, was considerably worse at that sort of speed calculation/memorization than I was. He also essentially saw the world in mathematical terms much of the time as far as I could tell.)

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

I was terrible at it because it made my disgraphia worse. I knew the answer but when I went to write it it came out wrong.

[gosling.livejournal.com]

I had that problem pretty much entirely throughout my education. In my first year chemistry class in college I was often essentially teaching the (perfectly competent) tutor things she knew less well than I; nonetheless I was unable to pass the class because of exactly that problem. (If the tests had been untimed I could have gone through and checked my work several times until I caught all the transposed and otherwise misplaced numbers. I did fine in the untimed class assignments; they just took me a while longer than some people.)

I have wondered for close to thirty years if I have undiagnosed disgraphia.

[skreeky]

I sort of do addition that way myself, only it's visual. Base 10 numbers are like containers with 10 spaces, and the container has 6 spaces already full, leaving 4 spaces. You want to add 8 blocks (the items are always perfectly cubical blocks fitting into a rectangular tube), and 4 of them fit into the existing container, leaving 4 to go in the next container. Hence 14. Since it's visual, though, it's essentially instantaneous. I just *see* the way the numbers fit together and that's the answer.

I figure I'm just weird. I certainly never tried to explain this to an adult.

[skreeky]

I'll follow up to say that I have no such visual built into my brain for times tables, and thus I HAAAAAAAAATED them. I still don't know what 7x8 is without thinking really really hard, because I don't have a mnemonic trick for 7s or 8s. I actually have to mentally make a factor tree and multiply the 7 by the 2s until I get there. Sometimes I remember that I can do 7x9 and subtract 7. (9s are great. You subtract 1 from the multiplier for the first digit, and then subtract that digit from 9 for the second: 7-1=6, 9-6=3, so it's 63, and I didn't have to do a whit of memorizing numbers. Incidentally, 63-7 is 56, which I just did with visual tubes.)

I pretty much flunked timed worksheets.

My dad is a mathematician, and I felt much better when he told me that not only does he stink at arithmetic but that most of the "real" mathematicians he knows stink at arithmetic, and that I was going to be really good at the conceptual stuff later. And lo, I was.