Back to main page.

Comments

It seems very difficult to impress on young teachers why the sentence "2+3=5" is AMAZING and should be treated with some respect.

Young teachers who have read a little bit of constructivist teaching and appreciate the freedoms without understanding the responsibilities, are liable to say, as one young woman told me with a completely straight face, "Number lines are not conceptual." She was defending her school's decision to adopt Math Trailblazers rather than a more traditional curriculum which depicted number lines in their first grade textbook.

-- BeckyC - 15 Jun 2005

Number lines are not conceptual?

-- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jun 2005

Number lines are not conceptual?

-- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jun 2005

I had to say that twice.

Otherwise, I'm not going to believe that a person actually said: Number lines are not conceptual.

-- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jun 2005

OK, here's a question:

Have you ever seen a number line In Real Life?

Do you see number lines at the park?

At the grocery store?

In the waiting room at the dentist's?

-- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jun 2005

Oh, my! Where do you start to try to untangle this web in which these "fuzzy math" people operate and think? It really is like a spider web, isn't it. Strands going off in so many different directions. They probably think that a "ruler" is used only to draw straight lines. I don't know -- maybe they now make "rulers" with no numbers just for use in "untraditional" classrooms! Hmmmmmmmmmmm!

-- CarolynMorgan - 15 Jun 2005

Tell that to my LD kid who was dependent on a number line until the 4th grade. It took that long for him to think of numbers abstractly.

-- SusanS - 15 Jun 2005

CarolynM The NCTM always speaks of mathematical 'strands,' as well.

There are no more subjects in math.

There are strands.

-- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jun 2005

Yes, thanks for noticing -- that's why I chose my word "strands". They attempt to weave all of these strands together as MATH and make the students "connect" or "integrate" them on their own without any direct teacher help. They expect this at far too early an agae. As a fifth grade teacher, I probably have 1 or 2 students each year out of about 50 who see these connections easily. And as a whole, my students are above average. The math gurus who think that the remaining students should be forced to make the connections are using foggy reasoning. It makes students discouraged when they can't "get it" if they think it's something they should be getting and they lose heart quickly.

-- CarolynMorgan - 15 Jun 2005

Carolyn--can you give us some specific examples of kids getting it & not getting it? (If you have time--)

-- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jun 2005