Why we use more than math textbooks and general-purpose resources

Posted on April 6th, 2011 by Sacha Chua

For last Sunday’s study group, we focused on algebraic expressions. The kids were a little out of sorts at the beginning. “Math is boring,” one said.

“The way it’s taught in school, maybe. But math is really useful in life, so it’s good to learn it,” I said. I shared a few examples of saving money with math, enjoying life with math.

The group warmed up using a matching exercise, matching the word problems on the left side with the algebraic expressions on the right. Then we worked through some of the problems I’d prepared. In one afternoon, we talked about:

cats and how much food they eat (1/4 cup, twice a day, 365 days, n cats…)
T-shirts, sleeping cat toys, and chopsticks that look like lightsabers
how much it might cost to eat onigiri for every meal, every day, for a year
how long you might be able to eat onigiri given a particular budget
Scott Pilgrim, Wallace, and Knives Chau
more cats, including Neko on my head

There are several types of exercises. Completely abstract ones (here’s an equation, solve for n) get lots of confusion and little engagement. Practical exercises (how much would this cost after tax?) get some interest. Outlandish exercises drawing on the kids’ interests get lots of laughs – and solutions. So we mix practical exercises and outlandish ones, one to show math in real life and the other to get the kids involved. It’s like improv comedy, but for education.

This is where parents and tutors really need to step in and mix things up. Textbooks are written for everyone. They can’t take individual interests into account, and they can’t be revised each month to take advantage of pop culture references. When you make up your own exercises, though, you can do whatever you want.

I know J- likes Scott Pilgrim, Fruits Basket, and cats, so they turn up in math exercises. It’s not hard to pick up some standard forms of exercises from textbooks and translate them into more interesting situations.

Helping someone learn? Make up exercises based on their interests and see what happens.

More posts about: learning, math, teaching // 7 Comments »

Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/22186

Joel Garza

Have you thought about combining in your drawing/presentation chops and contributing a lesson or two to some of the open source education repositories for teaching resources? :-)

I’ll try to come back with some links of things to share, as we have been looking for supporting resources to augment the textbook and classroom materials for a richer and more effective learning experience.
http://sachachua.com Sacha Chua

I haven’t thought about that yet. Thanks for the suggestion! There’s a lot of good work (not enough, but still plenty) focused on the classroom space, and quite a bit focused on individual learning. I’m currently more interested in small informal study groups (and maybe coaching other parents on how to coach kids!), so I’ll probably write more about that. =)
Joel Garza

You know, that actually a better spin on it, for informal study groups. I’ll have to keep looking to see if there is something in that space because that fits better.

One of the things that I saw that I thought was pretty neat, and was previously oblivious to, are the Pencasts people create with the Livescribe Smartpen, (www.livescribe.com, under pencasts). I watched a sample of an algebra problem and I thought to myself that was really neat to see. Now to find some that show solving proofs in automata theory. ;-)

Having done some tutoring sessions in math on a tablet, I never explored using a screen recorder to capture the action as it happens along with descriptive audio. This would have been a boon to the later review my tutees did on their own with just the captured content.
http://compscigail.blogspot.com Gail

You should check out this ex HS-math teacher (currently PhD student). He has some awesome ideas. Look at his blog in particular.

http://mrmeyer.com/
http://sachachua.com Sacha Chua

Thanks for the tip, Gail! I’ll check out his site and share what I’m learning.
http://truongnghiem.wordpress.com/ Truong Nghiem

Since you love drawing, I think you should check out this awesome book project: http://www.math.upenn.edu/~ghrist/FLCT/
It’s calculus, so it’s too advanced for the kids. But I think it’s a good example of how to mix maths and fun.

Cheers.
http://sachachua.com Sacha Chua

That’s a cool idea! =) Thanks for sharing.

On This Day...

2013: Weekly review: Week ending April 5, 2013 — The Emacs conference was a blast! I’ve volunteered to process and post the videos, and I’m looking forward to making [...]
2010: Weekly review: Week ending April 4, 2010 — What a wonderful week and long weekend! Plans for next week: Work [X] Give Remote Presentations That Rock presentation for soft [...]
2009: Weekly report: Week ending April 5, 2009 — From last week: Deploy new release of Transition2 Lessons learned Ride my bike! =) Work on organizing talks, ideas, and material some more [...]
2009: Nothing quite like Org for Emacs — I’ve been trying lots of different Web-based GTD task managers like Remember the Milk, Toodledo, and GTDAgenda. I’m slowly coming [...]
2008: TLE2008: Networking: A Workshop in Getting the Most from the TLE, Jim De Piante, part 1 of 2 — I attended Networking: a Workshop in Getting the Most from the TLE, by Jim De Piante. The session was about [...]
2008: TLE2008: Essential Problem-Solving Skills That Will Shorten A Project, Dick Orth — My day began with S011-LED: Essential Problem-Solving Skills That Will Shorten a Project, by Dick Orth. One of the key [...]
2008: Weekly review: March 31 to April 6 — Good morning! I’m writing this from the Rosen Centre in Orlando, Florida. I’m here for the IBM Technical Leadership Exchange, [...]
2006: Backlog: Beef medallion, baked potato — Pan-frying beef medallion isn’t quite the same as grilling it, but oh well – one does what one can. I’m a [...]
2006: “Talk nerdy to me” — Keynyn’s shirt is _so_ right. Well, not all the time, and not all kinds of nerdy. Sheer brilliance and obscure but [...]
2006: Backlog: Grilled again — I was planning to meet Calum for dinner, but I figured it would be a good day to try out the [...]
2005: Title suggestions — From Jan Alonzo: I think the reason why I mentioned “Planning the Unplanned” is because we plan (and prioritize) the stuff we [...]
2005: Open source licenses — http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/brian.html has a good explanation of the differences between popular open source licenses. Ã£ÂÂÃ£ÂÂ®Ã¥Â°Â‘Ã¥Â¹Â´Ã£ÂÂŸÃ£ÂÂ¡Ã£ÂÂ¯Ã£ÂÂ‹Ã£Â‚ÂÃ£ÂÂ„Ã£ÂÂ„Ã§ÂŒÂ«Ã£ÂÂ¨Ã¤Â¸Â€Ã§Â·Â’Ã£ÂÂ«Ã¯Â¼Â’Ã¤ÂºÂºÃ£ÂÂÃ£Â‚ÂŠÃ£ÂÂ§Ã¦ÂšÂ®Ã£Â‚Â‰Ã£ÂÂ—Ã£ÂÂ¦Ã£ÂÂ„Ã£ÂÂŸÃ£Â€Â‚ The two boys lived alone with a lovely [...]
2005: PIM love — I am completely in love with my latest indispensable personal information management tool: A 3×5 deck of plain (unruled) index cards. Seriously. A [...]
2004: Now up to 7522 in the ACM ranking — Got the Interpreter (10033) problem on the first try! =)
2004: Finally accepted. Up to #8038. — Grrrr, not reading specs well enough… E-Mail from Valladolid Online Judge
2004: Dropped to 8579 — I’m still getting wrong-answer on my solution for 10267. I hope this isn’t another Java/C thing. I’ll translate my program tomorrow, although [...]
2004: ACM status — I am currently a very lowly #8559. Will do another four problems tomorrow.

sacha chua living an awesome life