DreamBox Learning®» counting skills

Math Soft Spots in Child's Understanding

Sherry B — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:21:02 +0000

The DreamBox curriculum is focused on Number and Operations, as well as Number Sense. This content is so core to elementary mathematics that it takes up about 80% of classroom math instruction. With a new school year upon us, assessing what student's understand about numbers is a priority for teachers. I thought I'd share some soft spots I look for as I begin assessing young children's understanding of mathematics in the fall:

Counting items more than once or two at once

Counting one past the actual number of items

Being misled by perceptual clues

Confusing cardinal and ordinal numbers when counting

Reading a written number doesn't ensure an understanding of the number as a quantity

Thinking of a number as a group of symbols side by side rather than as an entity

What soft spots would you add to this list? As Director of Education Programs at DreamBox, I'll post regularly about teaching young children mathematics. We can share ideas, questions, and challenges through our blog postings. I look forward to hearing from you!

A Data-Driven World

Beth — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:28:58 +0000

Understanding the charts and graphs in the media these days can be tricky, to say the least. Statistics can be displayed in numerous ways to lead, or mislead, a person’s thinking about a topic. Case in point: a turn in the stock market by 4 points is very different than a turn by 4%. Learning to analyze data is an important skill that children need to learn so they can make decisions based on accurate information in the future.

Analyzing, collecting, and organizing data is something even very small children can begin to understand. It is also such a great way for kids to make connections with math in the real world. One thing I liked to do in my classroom during the first week of school was to read Chrysanthemum, by Kevin Henkes. The character Chrysanthemum, ends the first day of school apprehensive because of her name, which happens to be very long. In fact, her classmate pointed out that it consists of 13 letters, which is half of the alphabet. Poor Chrysanthemum! This book always led classes to a great discussion about our names. We collected data about all of the names of the students in the class. We looked at the number of letters in our names, the number of names that start with the same letter, and the number of vowels in each name. It was great for them to recognize that the same set of data could be analyzed in so many different ways. It was also a great way to learn each other’s names that first week!

Never Too Early to Build Analytical Data Skills in Kids

This is just one small example of how kids can experience data, yet there are so many daily opportunities for them to gain practice. Food nutritional labels, price comparisons at the store, and even the number of green candies in a package are all easy ways to help kids recognize and classify data in their world. In fact, as election season comes about, having a class vote on their favorite color, time of day, or even their favorite Halloween costume can bring real data into the forefront of a child’s eyes. It is imperative that kids are able to discern the data they encounter so they can be savvy in this data-driven world.

A Mathematical Folktale: More Than Just a Bedtime Story

Tami — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:26:18 +0000

A few years ago, on a much-enjoyed trip down to Portland, Oregon, I visited Powell's Books. This store used to be known as "the world's largest bookstore." I don't know what happened to that slogan, but with 7 huge stores in Portland -- 2 of which are specialty stores, and a large online service, I still believe it!!! Anyway… whenever I visit Powell's, I tend to spend the better part of a day getting lost in the children's book section. It's massive. It's impressive. It can even be overwhelming. And it’s this girth that can lead me to books I've never heard of before.

One Grain of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale

On this particular trip, I happened upon a very fine book, One Grain of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale by Demi. The story is of a Raja who believed himself to be wise and fair, but became selfish when a famine came. He refused to share his stores of the village rice. When the Raja offered a village girl a reward for a good deed, she suggested one grain of rice, doubled every day for thirty days. The Raja believed the reward to be modest and agreed to the terms. On the first day, the girl was given one grain of rice. On the second, two grains. The next day, she received four grains of rice. A few days later, she received over a thousand grains. By the end of the 30 days, the girl had received a total of one billion grains of rice -- enough for the whole village, and for the Raja too! The last page of the book has a chart to show how many grains the girl received on each day.

Math Learning Fun Through Literature

I love having this book in my collection. I really enjoy the math and moral messages. However, I also savor its fine storytelling, clever female protagonist, educationally-designed layouts, and beautiful artwork. Each page is drawn in the style of traditional Indian art, many touched with gold. And a few that open out into multi-page scenes filled with animals. By the way, One Grain of Rice, along with other great books, was mentioned in the August DreamBox Learning Parent Newsletter. The article was about children’s literature which encourages mathematical ideas. The DreamBox newsletter goes out once a month. It gives interesting and useful information to people who care about math learning. Sign up here for the Dreambox newsletter.