One of my most vivid memories of first grade is when Mrs. Gerry wouldn’t let me have a counting strip. It had lily pads on it and a frog at zero. When I got up to get in line to get my counting strip, Mrs. Gerry told me to turn around and sit down. “You don’t need one.†I was embarrassed to have my math skills announced like that to the class. But she was right, I didn’t need it. That was the start of my math nrrd status.
Last week I had my daughter at my office because of report card pick up. Yes, in Chicago, that means the kids have the day off so teachers can focus on parent conferences. She loves being at my office because I have a white board and I let her draw all over it. Normally she draws pictures, but this time she was doodling math problems. I turned around and saw that she was trying to add 15 to 20 and had figured it out. How did my kindergarten daughter figure this out? Well, she drew counters. First 15 then 20 more and counted them up. I also noticed that she wrote the problem out vertically, so I thought it was a good time to teach her how to add double digits. I drew boxes around the right column and told her to add those numbers, then did the same with the left column. I knew it would work because there was no carrying involved.
She looked at me like I was a genius. Then she asked me to write some more problems for her to do on the white board. Yes, I was proud.
The first thing I did when I got to the WAM! Conference at MIT on March 27th was to buy her a MIT sweatshirt. I buy her shirts from almost every campus I visit. Even though I work at a university, I want her to know that college is part of the plan and that there are so many more options than just the one mommy works at. While I was flooded with college brochures in high school, I had no idea how to navigate them. I threw the MIT one in the garbage because I didn’t think it was worth it to apply just to be denied. I want to keep that mentality from rooting itself in my daughter’s head. One of her favorite sleeping shirts is from Spellman.
So while I am a math nrrd and it is obvious that my daughter has some great math skills, I know that parents and teachers are key to making a skill into a passion. The next day when I was busy working when she asked me to write some math problems for her. “Some big ones!†So I did. And I did again when she was done and wanted more.
Girls have caught up with boys in math test scores and I give us parents a lot of credit for it. We stopped listening to naysayers who said math is a boy thing. We listened to feminists who said, hell no! We encouraged our daughters to explore the numbers dancing in their heads. It’s easy to be jaded and think that kids don’t listen to us, even as early as kindergarten. But we need to remember that we can still wow them with simple math magic. You never know where that might lead them.
Now to figure out how to teach her about carrying numbers in a way that keeps me looking like a genius.
Comments
tina — April 9, 2009
I recommend using physical objects, like beads or coins. Tell her she can "trade" 10 blue beads for one red bead, or 10 pennies for a dime. Your genius status will be maintained.
Cinnamon — April 18, 2009
My math teacher taught us about this in relation to money. The right column was pennies, the second columns was dimes, and the third column was dollars. It not only helped make money clearer, it helped me picture addition for a long time to come. She's got a very intuitive math sense. She may not be able to explain it, but the basic underlying logic just makes sense with her. I envy her that and I think your encouragement is a big reason why she has it.