DreamBox Learning®» learning math

Meet a DreamBox Character: Stella!

Cris — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 15:08:18 +0000

Meet Stella!

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!

A Few More Reasons "Why Must I Learn Math?"

Sue — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:06:12 +0000

I’m increasingly conscious of the gap between the urgent calls for more effective math education in the U.S., and the seemingly low expectations some parents have for their own child to advance in math. It’s as if the pressing national need has nothing to do with us on a personal level. I hear parents talk about their child’s math performance, and say things like “I was never good in math either.” Or regarding newer ways of teaching math, I’ve heard “I don’t like the ‘new math’ because I wasn’t taught that way.” I’ve written in this blog before about my own math education – although my father was an engineer I didn’t do well in math in school, and there have been times I've struggled to help my son with math homework because I had to first figure out the way it was being taught. It took me longer to see that math is problem solving, and to believe that I could be good at it. So I wanted to pass along a link to a site, published by a math teacher named Mark Karadimos, called MathGuide—and in particular the page on “Why Must I Learn Math?” For parents who bring the same kind of baggage to the subject that I do, this is a very educational read. Because today, it’s not just the traditional math and science careers that require mathematics—not just astronauts and scientists and engineers—every profession needs math.

Kids Need to Build Math Skills for All Professions

I'm more aware of this than ever because I'm working on a short documentary-style video for DreamBox where we interviewed more than 50 children, asking them what they want to be when they grow up. As part of this project I've been researching how an amazing range of careers—from beauticians to farmers to paleontologists, rock stars, and zoologists—all need math in their jobs! And if you still have any doubt about why it’s important to overcome our own negative math education experiences, read the National Math Panel report to learn more about the importance of math in terms of access to college, career choices, and earning potential! You’ll find it, along with other parent resources, at the U.S. Dept. of Education site.

Have a Little Fun, Practice French and a Little Math

Sue — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:43:00 +0000

On a day when I didn’t really have any time to goof off, I just found more than an hour of free time I didn’t think I had. That’s thanks to the Mostly Mommies blog which recently mentioned GoMaths.ch, a French site with free educational games. My French is pretty basic but since numbers are universal and the games use pretty common conventions, many of them are easy to understand. People who play online games will find many of them familiar. I come across sites with free “educational games” pretty often – so many of them are not places I’d recommend for parents. But I found myself exploring and playing these, and lost all track of time! There are some fun math-related games here – your children won’t learn new math concepts, but there are web versions of many popular puzzles and pattern matching games, memory games, brain teasers, and some of them can give your kids fun ways to practice basic math operations. You’ll find appropriate games for a range of abilities.

Lots of Fun Learning Games for All Ages

I lost 20-30 minutes playing a puzzle game called Five, where you figure out strategies for grouping 5 adjacent balls of the same color as the maze fills up. There’s a charming game called Les Bulles (The Bubbles) where you can choose the operation you want to practice (addition, subtraction, etc.), then pop floating bubbles that equal your target number. In a completely addictive game called Splash Back, you judge the relative sizes of blobs of green liquid, predict which row where you'll pop the most bubbles, and use up your ten drops to grow the blobs, create combinations, and earn more drops. And there are a couple of Magic Circle/Square games where all the sides have to add up to the same number. I could keep going, but you get the idea. This is one site where you probably won’t mind letting your child play, even if you’re generally leery of game sites. If your children happen to be studying French the math will be an added bonus! And now I really can’t put off making dinner any longer. For more being mathematically international, check out World Math Day!

One Reason US Students Are Falling Behind in Math

Sarah — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:10:10 +0000

We've had a lively discussion in our office this week about the recent New York Times article on issues in US math education in general, and in encouraging girls to be successful in math in particular (“Math Skills Suffer in U.S., Study Finds”). What’s one of the reasons US students are falling behind in math? As the article says, “American culture does not highly value talent in math, and so discourages girls – and boys, for that matter – from excelling in the field.” 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!

Math is Defensive Too

Lou — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 01:07:42 +0000

As I read the economic headlines today and the news about AIG’s bailout, I can’t help think about how much math is being done right now all over Washington, Wall Street, and the world. Serious folks are attempting to calculate the impact of this financial melee across instruments, sectors, and countries. Some of the math is easy, more is fuzzy, and even more is mind-numbing in its complexity. But what is pretty clear is that the math that got us here was flawed. Kind of reminds me of a Warren Buffett quote: “There are really only three kinds of people in the world: those who can count and those who can't.” (Source:1998 Berkshire Hathaway annual report) What does this any of this have to do with defensive math? Well, the average adult (aka former math student) should probably consider doing the math on how these headlines might impact them and their family (e.g., investments, mortgage, retirement, credit cards, college funds, savings, etc.). I’ll call this defensive math. Not to trivialize this, but I believe that over 75% of the required defensive math skills are taught by 3rd grade, and yet too few people really have the skills or confidence necessary to be defensive. This is also why I believe parents need to help and encourage their child at an early age to appreciate the flexibility, relevance, and application of math in and beyond their classrooms.

Early Math Skills Build a Strong Foundation for Success

We often talk about how a solid understanding math can help one prosper in school and life. Yet it’s equally true that it can help us be defensive too. Again I'm reminded of Warren Buffett, who once stated that his success (both in good times and bad) was in part due to the fact that a young age he could do mathematical computations in his head.