During my graduate studies in elementary education at the
University of Alabama at Birmingham, I was privileged to take a course on
teaching elementary math from Constance Kamii, a professor who had worked
closely with and learned much from Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist known for
his work in childhood development. This
course completely changed my understanding of how children attain mathematical concepts
and made it abundantly clear to me why so many people believe themselves to be
hopelessly bad at math.
The course centered around a book written by Constance
Kamii, “Young Children Reinvent Arithmetic,” and I have since reread and reread
this book as I seek to apply what I learned with those who I teach. Now, as my oldest is approaching Kindergarten
in the next year or so, I am rereading the book again with pen in hand in order
to arrive at my plan for introducing Finn to math.
One of the simplest conclusions based on all of this study
that I can share with you, is that the way traditional textbooks and teachers
introduce children to numbers and algorithms (processes for arriving at correct
answers to math problems) often derails them in their ability to think for
themselves mathematically. Children who
would be able to, in time, do large sums in their heads with a full understanding
of what they are doing, are instead directed to follow step 1, then step 2, then
step 3 in order to produce an answer and they have no real understanding of why
they are doing said steps or why the answer they arrived at is correct (or not
correct).
So, for starters, I plan to avoid introducing algorithms to
Finn as long as possible and allow him to grow in his concept of numbers and
how they relate to each other through playing lots of math games that encourage
mental math. In Kamii’s book there are
countless studies and experiments conveyed with school students which show that
learning math in this way early on leads to correct answers a much higher
percentage of the time, a greater understanding of how to solve real-world math
problems, and a greater joy and confidence for children in doing math.
I plan to continue journaling my findings and subsequent
plans as I go through Kamii’s book yet again.
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