Can You Say “Backwards"?
In a short feature, Keep Math Skills Sharp This Summer, Parents and Kids points out that “According to a study by the Partnership for Learning, an average student can forget 60 percent of the math skills they learned during the school year…”
Read that again: Better than half of the skills we teach for nine months each winter are lost in three months. If you’re mathematically inclined, graph that one: a unit of improvement in nine months, a 60% drop in three months, and reiterate. Seem like a questionable way to turn out top math students?
Anne Collins, Director of Mathematics Programs at Lesley University, offers strategies to keep math skills sharp during summer.
Simple card games can teach and keep multiplication or addition skills fresh; assisting parents with menu planning, or home improvement projects teach and reinforce problem solving; an inexpensive stopwatch can open dozens of doors and questions of time and rate of speed ratios. This summer especially, challenging a child to determine the cost of gasoline for a day or weekend trip can be very instructive - while empowering him or her to find answers to such questions.
Summer is a perfect opportunity for informal education, and helping students practice their math skills in different settings,” Collins said. “It doesn’t have to be a time for math skills review, but instead a time for children to put them to good use.
Grow With the Flow readers know these are just the kind of activities I think are critical to the development of real math ability (as opposed to the acquisition of arithmetic facts). Professor Collins is clearly a dynamite teacher and teacher teacher. I half susupect her of an end run here:
The way we teach math is so deplorable that the majority of the math facts we drill into kids’ heads each year is lost in a few months. So maybe we should teach practical, real-life, empowering, problem-solving, useful math all year long?
It’s a great idea, Professor Collins, and it just might work in Massachusets. But forget it out here in the Wild West – We’re too busy getting our kids ready to take the CSAPs to teach them something useful.
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What has changed in the last 20 years of education? I don’t remember by parents coming up with teaching plans for my summer vacation so I didn’t loose 2 years of reading levels or 60% of math skills over the summer. And I’m not convinced that state wide achievement tests are all to blame. Do kids really go backwards or are they just going “back” to the educated position that was fully successful. Its very frustrating as a parent to develop ways to keep the backstep from happening. Frankly I’m like my kids I want a summer vacation too but then I’d be a bad parent wouldn’t I. I’d better get back to my lesson plans.
Kate,
Yeah! Rereading your comment, I think I’m finally catching up with what you’re saying:
Are you thinking that kids aren’t going “back” in math, but just sloughing off the part that really doesn’t matter so much, and keeping the core of useful stuff?Does it seem like instead of trying to prevent the “backstep,” we’d be ahead to just enjoy the natural opportunities to play with the math in the world with our kids? This doesn’t take lesson plans (!), but just being mindful of the world around.
Following up on Dave’s comment, I really like the idea
of using the opportunities that just come up in the course
of a day for kids to practice math skills rather than
trying to teach or reteach skills during the summer. I
agree that card games are a great way to reinforce math
skills. Have fun!