Planning Math Lessons

The greatest unsolved theorem in mathematics is why some people are better at it than others. ~Adrian Mathesis

The mind works of a child—and just one child! Can you imagine teaching a classroom full of individual thinkers? I used to think I wanted to be a teacher—I was very young—now I realize I much prefer being a tutor of a few. Learning how one thinks and molding that to its greatest potential, now that is a challenge I enjoy. A classroom of children, with which I cannot really connect, is too similar to throwing each child out in the water and then expecting me to teach them swimming techniques while while standing on the dock. I just cannot imagine it.

As every other child in the world, my daughter has a unique mind, different from mine and yet we have so much in common. I have to say, though, that our differences are most striking in math. I knew I was going to be challenged with her when she was learning coins. You see, my daughter is a people person, so much so that when she was four years old she could not pick out a penny amongst silver coins, but if I asked her to find the coin with Abraham Lincoln, the child found it and then proceeded to tell me everything she knew about the man and the coin itself, even saying that it was a "penny" worth one cent and that it was the only coin that was made of copper which turns brown. I then would place the penny back with the other coins (all silver) and ask her to find the "penny," she just could not do it. She progressed by learning the people on all the coins and then surprised me with not only her ability to count money but to add it. It came so easily to her!

Subtraction was and still is an obstacle. 5-3=__ I showed her multiple ways of getting the answer, including turning it around to an addition problem because she did so well with addition, but her brain just could not process any equation with a minus sign, even when she knew the word problem required a subtraction equation and she had written it out herself. I finally asked her if she had five pieces of candy and she gave one piece to each of three friends how many would she have left, without any hesitation at all, as if she was a whiz at math, she said "2." Then I would show her the equation on paper 5-3=__ ....blank stare! It took some time to teach her to talk out each equation, using her interesting thinking processes, so it was a story with friends in it. She finally got to the point that she could just look at the equation and get the answer using more traditional math thinking processes. However, now that she is into regrouping, she has had more difficulty with it again, but she does much better when the equation is about money...?

So this is how it works with the Princess:

• She gets addition, simple multiplication, and simple division, but struggles with subtraction.
• She does better with any 3 or 4 digit numbers used in subtraction if we convert them to money.
• She gets word problems, but zones out with a page of simple equations.
• She likes teaching math to her friends (dolls, Sunday School class, etc.) but she doesn't like math lessons herself.
• She can do most math mentally, but she does not like writing it out.
• She will make up her own math problems and solve them, but does not like to write out equations when required.

It is challenging for me, because at her age I well remember how I loved writing out math equations, having equations in neat columns and rows to see how neat I could keep my paper and how fast I could solve them, and memorizing math tables, but I had more difficulty with mental math and struggled some with word problems. We are nearly polar opposites when it comes to math, but it seems that her math mind-works come from her father, who always amazed me how he could just look at the groceries we were buying and guess within a few dollars the total cost. I would have to tally as I go so I would not embarrass myself in making an estimate, if one could call it that, but he could quickly calculate it all in his head at a glance. That describes what I see with the Princess.

Presently, the Princess is finishing the last couple of weeks in my lesson plan for the present level and I have stacks of books and papers piled on my desk to combine together in a tailor-made curriculum for the Princess as I am planning the next level. I am still using Singapore's Primary Mathematics as our spine with Miquon and a few other resources. Singapore is a logical sequential approach from concrete to pictorial to abstract. Miquon, by contrast, is more focused on encouraging observation, investigation, and the discovery of patterns. Neither alone would have been sufficient and I must continually teach the math as she is not ready to do it on her own, except when it is multiplication, of course.

~ My Lord, I ask that You continually guide me while I am teaching my daughter, particularly in math. ~