Many a parent has told me that if only they’d had a set of fraction tiles when they were young, math would have gone very differently for them. That may even be understating things. It’s hard to imagine a handful of plastic pieces could significantly change the course of a life, but then again, things [...]
Filed under: Good Stuff, On Kids and Learning | Tagged: anxiety, capacity, exploration, fractions, learning, Math, simple solutions, teaching | Leave a Comment »
Fractions wouldn’t take as long to teach (take a look at local or state curriculum guidelines to see how many grades’ worth of math time are generally allotted) if young children got as much experience with other fractions as they get with halves. I meet lots of kids who are “having a hard time with [...]
Filed under: On Kids and Learning | Tagged: capacity, fractions, learning, Math, teaching | Leave a Comment »
I’m not sure how I didn’t know about this book already, but I’m glad I do now. It’s called A Mathematician’s Lament, and begins with the following quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach [...]
Filed under: Good Stuff, On Kids and Learning | Tagged: algebra, art, capacity, choice, creativity, exploration, fractions, inquiry, intelligence, learning, Math, math practice, resistance, teaching | Leave a Comment »
I know lots of kids who can tell you that the top number in a fraction is called the numerator and the bottom number is called the denominator. But they don’t understand how the two numbers function or relate to each other. The words numerator and denominator do technically describe the functions of each number, [...]
Filed under: Good Stuff, On Kids and Learning | Tagged: algebra, creativity, exploration, fractions, hands-on, inquiry, learning, Math, resistance, simple solutions | Leave a Comment »
I’ve been doing fractions for several decades, and only yesterday did I find out how the numerator (the number on the top) and the denominator (the one on the bottom) got their names. I’m not sure that knowing why they’re called what they’re called will help too many folks who struggle with fractions, but I’m [...]
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I hung on to a daily math practice book from my last classroom teaching job, and it’s proven a good keep. It’s published by Great Source, and is set up as a quick review for a range of math concepts (place value, fractions and decimals, etc.). It’s called Practice Counts, and comes in several different [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: adding, decimals, fractions, math practice, place value, subtracting | Leave a Comment »
