Turning kids on to math

Teaching Pre K-8, Jan 1999 by Murphy, Stuart J

Classroom strategies for making mathematics enjoyable for young students

Engaging young children in the study of mathematics - really engaging them so that they're excited about math and realize that it's part of their everyday system of communication - is critical to their success. All children must become fluent in the language of mathematics.

To achieve this goal, teachers must employ strategies that assure that children have easy and frequent access to math ideas. Children must become confident in their ability to think mathematically.

Providing this access and developing this confidence requires that teachers think about why kids aren't "turned on" by math and what they can do about it.

Too often kids feel that math has little to do with them - that it's not relevant to their lives. Therefore, I try to show how math ideas can be applied to things that interest them like selling lemonade, going to a theme park, planning a birthday party, playing soccer and communicating with their friends.

Here are some specific strategies that may help you connect mathematics to real-life experiences for your kids.

Read stories that include mathematical ideas. Children often understand difficult mathematical concepts more readily when they are presented within the context of a story.

Select books that include math ideas. Such stories can engage children and help them to relate the language of math to their own daily language and to the stories of their own lives.

Use materials from the real world

Ask children to rip out pages of old magazines and catalogs that have photos containing shapes they can identify. Then, have them use markers to highlight the shapes. Hang the photos on the walls, grouping all of the triangles in one place, all of the rectangles in another and so on. As the display grows, ask the children to rearrange the display by placing together all of the shapes that look the same within each group. Soon, you'll have an ever-growing geometry display.

Use socks, shoes and mittens when talking about pairs, matching and counting by twos.

Bring leaves and flowers into your classroom to demonstrate symmetry.

Create visual models.

Draw objects and then divide them into various fractions.

Create visual equations by drawing the objects being added or subtracted. Then, count them up.

Encourage children to create sketches and diagrams to explain their thinking.

Collect data and conduct surveys.

Make bar graphs that show the different pets that children in your class have and discuss which are the least and most popular.

Conduct a survey of your class to see how many birthdays fall in each month or which days of the week are the most and least favorite. Create bar graphs to show this data and encourage your students to talk about them. Which month has the most birthdays? Which day is the least favorite? Why?

Connect math to other curriculum areas.

Create timelines to show various periods in history. For example, make a timeline of the history of the ice cream cone. Then, research the average cost of a cone during each decade and add that information to the display. Consider the cost of cones two decades from now.

Create a map of your schoolyard and talk about proportion and scale. Is the paved area larger than the grassy area? Does the school take up more space than the yard around it? Are things positioned at the right distance and size in relation to one another?

Combine math with a science unit on clouds. How high are the clouds? How are they classified?

Write about math. Create a story that includes math information. What time, day or year is it when your story starts? How long do each of the events take? What time, day or year is it when your story ends?

Use math when you share your own stories with students.

Make a map that shows your trip to school each day or a timeline to talk about a recent vacation. Highlight math ideas in your everyday activities. How are you going to divide the class into equal teams for the game? How many minutes is it until lunch break?

I truly believe that we can turn kids on to math by making sure that they see that it's part of their own everyday, real-life world+

For more math activities that relate to MathStart books, visit the website at www.harperchildrens. com/schoolhouse

Stuart J. Murphy is a visual learning specialist and the author of the MathStart series of children's books. He is also an author of Silver Burdett Ginn Elementary Mathematics and many McDougal Littell high school mathematics books. He and his wife, Nancy, live in Evanston, IL. For more on Murphy's approach to writing about math, see "Murphy's Magical MathStart," Teaching K-8, January 1998.