Math learning games important at any age

Does this mean worksheets and flash cards? Of course not. Creative parents and pre-K teachers can easily incorporate math into the play activities they are already doing. Preschoolers  can count how many rocks they collect, measure their feet, compare the size of two leaves, and discuss whether ladybugs are shaped more like circles or ovals. Sounds like fun to me!

Reigniting the math learning debate

This sparked a follow-up — someone else shared the TED conference video “Don’t eat the marshmallow yet!” In it Joachim de Posada describes a well-known experiment on delayed gratification and how self-control can predict future success. It’s worth a watch, even aside from the video of adorable kids trying their hardest not to eat a marshmallow!

TED Conference talk: “Don’t eat the marshmallow yet”

With so much cultural emphasis on instant gratification — peer pressure to have/wear the trendy thing, media exposure to a huge number of ad messages, easy credit (well, maybe it’s a little less easy now) — it’s no wonder we all feel the pressure to have it all and have it now. How can parents teach self discipline, control, and patience in this environment? (Research suggests that many parents feel this is an area they haven’t done well with.) Smarter folks than I have wondered this too, so I went looking for a good resource on this topic. Now it’s my turn to share: here’s a great article on Parenthood.com: “How to Teach Kids Self-Discipline.” There’s plenty of insightful, common sense advice, plus a few other good resources if you want to learn more.

Looking for more depth I wandered around his blog, where he explores the misunderstanding about the role games play in the educational process. There’s a lot of great insight here! He describes games not so much as programs “with content that must be delivered but rather as spaces for exploration, experimentation, and problem solving.” In other words, learning games aren’t just textbooks in a different form. They are so much more powerful because they can harness the active participation, exploration, and self-directed learning inherent in game play.

“The learning which games foster… is “undisciplined” in the best sense of the world—the child is encouraged to pursue their interests where-ever they lead without regard to the way schools divide up content or time.” For parents who care about fostering a lifelong love of learning, this is a powerful way to look at how to look at online learning games and their children’s “screen time”.

You can read more from Henry Jenkins on his blog.

The Effects of Mandating Algebra in School Math Programs:

In 1997 the Chicago school district was one of the first to require that 9th graders take algebra to help ensure that its high school graduates would be ready for college. And many districts have followed—Minnesota and California even requiring it in 8th grade, assuming the California policy is implemented. However, researchers found rising failure rates, and the algebra mandate “did not seem to lead to any significant test-score gains for students in math or in sizeable increases in the percentages of students who went on to take higher-level math courses later on in high school.” (You can read the Edweek article I’m quoting here.)

But isn’t it obvious that if algebra is the needed foundation for their future, kids need the right early foundation to be successful in algebra? All of which reinforces my belief in the importance of what we’re doing at DreamBox: helping more kids develop conceptual understanding and fluency with basics—like number sense and computation—and giving them engaging ways to develop problem solving skills. We’re helping kids to be confident and well prepared for success with algebra.

As Buckleitner talks, he tells stories. Stories about toys that talk, even when one isn’t playing with them. Have you ever been eating dinner and heard some toy on the ground start singing a song? The toy is shouting, “Play with me.” He talked about kids wanting control of the game and their need to think as they play. Often toys interrupt kids’ thinking, which interferes with their ability to continue their own creativity and growth. This made so much sense. And we had made this mistake in our earliest version of the product!

DreamBox Online Learning: The Nuts and Bolts of our Math Education Software

Luckily, we only had 40 math games built. We went back to each one and dramatically changed our use of audio instruction. We replaced the long, explicit directions before each game with a simple introduction, often  a single line of audio. We implemented a Help button. If kids want more instruction, they’ll ask for it.

Click on Help once and you’ll hear quick, simple one- or two- sentence directions. Click on Help twice and you’ll receive more explicit how-to directions. Are you finished with the directions or other audio hints? The help button often becomes a Skip button. Press Skip and the audio stops. Tired of the background music? Turn it off by clicking on the little speaker in the top right corner of the screen. Basically, we empower our young users to choose how much noise they want while playing our online math learning game.

Another surprise: many parents prefer the old way! They want to be told exactly how to complete a game, with a sample problem and all. Ultimately, we deferred to the kids. (Shhh. Hey parents — click Help twice and you’ll still get the explicit directions!)

Stella is the Host of DreamBox Learning K-2 Math!

Stella is the narrator and host of DreamBox Learning K-2 Math! Stella introduces DreamBox students to the magical adventure park and prepares them for their adventures in math learning.

As students play games, uncover clues, and learn lots of math, Stella is a fun and consistent guide through the world of DreamBox.

Stella is the main instructional voice of the math lessons and pops in from time to time to help students focus on new topics or to celebrate their success!

When she’s not hanging around the DreamBox neighborhood helping kids have an amazing time learning math, she enjoys painting, crafty projects, reading mystery novels, nature hikes, and of course math!

Thanksgiving Wish, by Michael J. Rosen

It is always nice to have a fresh perspective on old traditions, but math on a holiday? Many kids will groan if their parents suggest such a thing. There is a way to make the connection between Thanksgiving and math, but it’s always nice to start off this lesson with a story. Thanksgiving is a time of year when teachers traditionally review the great harvest, discuss the Native American and pilgrim lifestyle, and help students find time to give thanks about something in their lives. It can be hard for kids to make the connection about people from hundreds of years ago, even if there is a common thread of giving thanks.

In Thanksgiving Wish, author Michael J. Rosen writes about a non-traditional Thanksgiving in modern times. A power outage, a missed grandmother, as well as Jewish and Asian traditions line the edges of this touching story.

So where’s the math? Well, Thanksgiving is the most gluttonous day of the year and in order to create such wonderful food, the chef must know how to calculate. Cooking is a fantastic link between math and real life, even on a holiday!

Here are some fun turkey math activities for your Thanksgiving day:

1. Review elapsed time by helping your child write down the times that the turkey went into the oven and the time it came out. Your child might need a little help calculating the number of hours if it crosses a 12.
2. Let your child measure a set of ingredients. Try letting the little ones do the dry ingredients, while the older chefs might be able to handle the liquids without too many spills.
3. Simply counting out forks, knives and spoons can be helpful practice for many early learners.
4. Fractions are almost always used in cooking and can be tricky to double for a large group of people.

After tasting Aunt Kari’s pumpkin pie the year she put in too much salt, I’d say I’m very thankful for math, especially on a holiday!

This story illustrates the blending of international traditions with a US holiday and reminds us how giving thanks is a universal language just like math. Celebrate the Thanksgiving of math with World Math Day on March 4th!

And yes, we ALL agreed that children should spend most of their time playing with other children and adults, using real things, and going outside! And we also agreed that many — perhaps the majority? — of technology toys and online media are “dust”. But, and this is an important but, many products use technology in ways that open up new opportunities for children, and let them learn and explore and play in wonderful new ways. These are the products that are “magic”!

What Makes Up a Good Children’s Learning Product?

How can we make interactive media products — like DreamBox — “magic”? Here are some of the key ideas I walked away with:

1. Let the child be the actor. Whenever possible, give the child control of what to do and create. Examples of this range from providing multiple choices for what to do next, to waiting for the child to indicate when its time to move ahead.
2. Keep it simple. ‘Nuf said.
3. Make it as open-ended as possible. Just as a blank piece of paper or a box of plain LEGOS inspires open-ended imaginative and creative play, make games that use technology as yet another open-ended tool. For example, in the world of math learning, we can create virtual manipulatives that children use and move to build numbers.

As early as late elementary school or middle school, kids who used to love math all of a sudden realize that it’s not “cool”, and/or that “math is really hard and I’m not good at it so I won’t try very hard”. Talk about pre-ordaining failure!

The article reports on a new study published in an academic journal last week that took a new approach to the question of whether boys are genetically more likely to be gifted in math than girls. Are genetics the reason that there are so few women mathematicians among university faculty or the top researchers? This study suggests not, but rather it is our education system and culture. There are many more kids with the POTENTIAL to be ‘gifted’ in math than kids who are actually being found, nurtured, and coached as very gifted in math, and this is a societal problem.

The Culture of Fostering Math Learning Skills

The US has a culture that tends to be anti-math, and in particular, associates being good at math with being nerdy. So in the US we’ve identified very few girls who we deem ‘talented in math’, even though many girls have the potential. And a disproportionate number of the identified highly gifted math students in the US are Asians or immigrants from a country that values math. Since some other countries – such as Bulgaria and Romania – have many more women who are very gifted in math (even though these countries are so much smaller than the US) , it is clearly a result of better math education plus a culture that expects and values it.

So, as parents and educators, let’s all do our part to change this. Our kids are picking up our societal bias against math. When an adult says “Can someone else please figure out the tip for this restaurant bill? I’m not good at math!” or “I always struggled at math, so I’m not surprised my child isn’t doing well”, you can be sure that some little ears are listening!

I recently came across a great resource for answers to this question, published by the Illinois Early Learning Project. They begin with the premise that children under 3 are better off interacting with adults, other children, and toys. But they go on to suggest some ways that computers can benefit children ages 3-5, and some excellent guidelines.

Tips for Young Kids and Computer Games

This site also suggests a number of other resources for learning more about young children and computer use. Check it out!

While he didn’t watch much TV when he was young, my son loved Disney radio which was constantly promoting Disney shows, so I’d try to raise his consciousness about the difference between the program and the advertising. According to Consumer Reports magazine, it’s a developmental issue: “young children have difficulty distinguishing between advertising and reality in ads, and ads can distort their view of the world.” (There’s a good article about this on the Media Awareness Network site.) That’s why Sweden and Quebec have banned advertising aimed at pre-teen kids.

It’s astonishing how many entertainment and learning game sites there are for kids as young as 2 or 3 – even for babies! There are countless ad-supported sites that offer educational games and fun activities. On these sites parents can at easily point out the difference between the links in the “Ads by Google” sidebar and the activity links.

Determining the Serious Learning Games from the Advertisements

But it’s getting harder to distinguish between the ad and the content. Advertisers are developing online programming to promote their products outside of traditional advertising formats. Teletubbies, Lego, and hundreds of other products aimed at young children are building online activity sites as a way to promote their brand. Nick Jr. has been very successful building the Nickelodeon brand and viewership through “learning games” and online activities with its TV characters like Dora and Blues Clues. Even the respected education brand PBS has jumped on the bandwagon with PBS Kids, promoting Barney and other shows.

Soon, DreamBox will offer serious math learning in the form of online adventure games for kids as young as kindergarten. So we’re not unbiased as we look at other products that have educational value. But on another level, we’re passionate about giving parents an effective way to help their kids learn math that’s just as fun, without the consumerism promoted in so many of these choices.

Look Mom! No ads, just games!

To be clear about this, Bellevue teachers didn’t strike against standardized tests. But standardized curricula are being implemented to improve standardized test scores. And what is being sacrificed in order to improve scores? Standardized tests emphasize recall at the expense of critical thinking. Automatic recall of basic facts is important because it frees up the mind to think. But recall isn’t the same as thinking, or putting those facts to use in real-world problem solving.

According to Marion Brady, a widely respected educator, this increased focus on tests means ignoring higher-order thinking skills because “nobody has yet invented a test-scoring computer program that can evaluate the quality of complex thought processes and spit out meaningful numbers…The more sophisticated the thought process, the less it lends itself to meaningful mechanical or electronic evaluation.”*

Prioritizing Educational Standards and Practices for Kids

Unlike a number of people at DreamBox, I’m not an educator. Rather, I draw on my experiences sitting down with my son after dinner for family study time. He would drag himself through the memorization homework and would light up with ideas for any hands-on creative or collaborative project. While I wanted to instill the discipline of studying, I hated having to pull him away from the progressive story or research project he and his buddies were developing when it was time to do some rote exercise.

Personally, I’m a wholehearted believer in reordering our priorities and making education one of our most important investments as a society. As difficult and subjective as it is to measure, I think we need a system that goes beyond standardized tests to truly recognize what great teaching can do. Excellence must be defined, outstanding teachers should be held accountable and rewarded (yes, monetarily) for improved student outcomes, but machine scoring shouldn’t be the only measure of success.

*Educational Leadership, Cover the Material—Or Teach Students to Think?”, Marion Brady, February 2008, Volume 65, Number 5, Pages 64-67

Official studies aside, I personally believe the connection with music is not only to intelligence, but also to math. Especially for those who play(ed) instruments.

OK, so I don’t know if Madonna aced the math portion of her SATs, if Ozzy Osbourne can do long division in his head, or if Itzhak Perlman is a wiz at calculus. However, in my career, I have been privileged to work with some extraordinary people. And when the topic of music comes up, I often hear that these people not only listened to classical music, they played it. In fact, during my most recent conversation on this topic, I learned that one of the DreamBox programmers whom I admire played in a professional symphony at 16!

The Connection Between Music and Math Learning

There are some direct connections between playing music and doing math. Especially when reading musical notation. For example, the math involved in understanding the duration of each note (ex: a full note is played twice as long as a half note which is played twice as long as a quarter note, etc.). And understanding the fractional time signature in musical notation, where the top number is how many beats are in a measure and the bottom number is the type of note that gets one beat (Ex: 6/8 means there are 6 beats in a measure and an eighth note gets one beat). Yeah, maybe I didn’t understand all the nuances of time signatures when I started violin in 3rd grade. But eventually I learned all that.

There are also less obvious connections between music and math. Like learning that certain chords sound good together, or sound happy or sad. And learning to memorize how to play a song by remembering the written notes, specific physical movements to make with the instrument or body, and/or the actual musical progression.

No matter what the connection is between music and math, I loved playing music while I was growing up. And even though I hated to practice my violin and I still sounded like Frankenstein after playing for years, I appreciate all that music gave to me. I believe that I got a strong foundation which made mathematical and scientific concepts easier to grasp. I got an appreciation for various cultural arts and the skills needed to be good at them. I got the ability to listen to a song and say, “Hey, I played that!” And I got lifelong friends (and co-workers) who share an appreciation for the connection between music and math.

That reminds me, one time, at band camp… Arrowbear Music Camp was the place that kept me playing and practicing year after year. But I’ll save that for another post!

Most, if not all, of the parents I know have implemented a “screen time” limit for their kids, where screen time includes watching TV or movies, and playing games on the computer or handhelds. Most parents also want to make sure these screen time choices are age-appropriate, but find it difficult to really know which TV shows or movies are “healthy” and which are “junk food”.

Knowing What Games and Programs are Healthy Screen Time for Kids

Lisa’s book Into the Minds of Babes was an eye-opener to me about the available research on what makes a TV show or a computer game healthy or not, and what children can learn from them. I recommend to it all parents. It influenced how I choose what my two young sons are watching and doing at home.

Her point of view has been influential here at DreamBox Learning too. For example, learning about the the intensive testing that Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues have done to understand how their shows impact kids has led us to do even more testing of our product. Our goals are very much in the spirit Lisa describes – to make our product “healthy” screen time, helping kids learn real math and have fun doing it, so that parents will offer it to their children on a regular basis without viewing it as “junk food for the brain.”

To measure number sense the authors showed 14-year-old children images of blue and yellow dots and asked the child if there were more blue dots or yellow dots. The images were shown for less than a second so the students could not count them and instead had to estimate which group had more. Most students did well when one group was significantly bigger, but some students were much better when the difference was smaller.

The researchers then looked at each child’s scores on several standardized math tests. The students who performed well on the number sense activity also had higher math achievement. The correlation remained even after they accounted for IQ, working memory, and several other measures of cognitive skill.

When Are Math Learning Skills Determined?

This study seems to support the common belief that math is easy for some people and harder for others. I’m not sure I buy that though. The skill measured in the estimation task develops very early in life, starting before one year. I refuse to believe that future math achievement is determined before a child can even talk.

I’d love to see a study where they took the children who struggled with the estimation task and tried to improve those skills with repeated practice. I wonder if their math achievement would improve? Perhaps age 14 is too late to try that kind of experiment but maybe it could be done with children in preschool or early elementary. That would help establish whether ability with relative estimates raises math scores by itself or whether there are additional factors at play.

What do you think?

Additionally, when it comes to math, do girls = boys?