I have been working with a Senior Kindergarten child for two months, and let me tell you, this is not just any SK child. This SK boy is able to perform adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing whole numbers, decimal numbers, fractions, and signed numbers up to a Grade 6 level.
This little boy loves to do math puzzles, find patterns, explain his logical reasoning, and last but not least, he loves to show me that he doesn’t like to write.
I was told by his mother that he is no different at home. Homework that involves writing, journaling, and completing reading logs might as well be the same as pulling teeth for him.
I am sure many parents and teachers struggle with this. How to get a child to write independently? In my case, for a math-loving child who has all the interest in numbers and puzzles, how do I encourage him to put his thinking into written words and full sentences?
Over these two months, I gathered some tricks up my sleeves and tried several strategies.
Patterns
Math Fiction
“If you could choose…” Questions
Math Magic Tricks
In Part 1 of this “How to Get a Math-loving Child to Write” series, I will discuss the first two strategies I used.
Patterns
Using a math puzzle as the writing prompt, I encouraged the student to explain how he got the answer.
For example, he was asked to find the missing number in this simple puzzle below.
The challenge was for him to explain in writing how he got the answer.
Second challenge. Then, I asked him to write down as many different ways as possible to find the answer.
He came up with a pattern of addition across the rows as well as multiplying 2 down the column.
Math Fiction
Math Fiction are picture book stories that involve a hidden math lesson. Some of my favorites are:
We first read “A Place for Zero”, a story about Zero, who felt no sense of belonging in the land of numbers because Zero thought it wasn’t a useful number at all.
Our writing exercises began with some straight-forward reading comprehension questions such as “Why was Zero so sad?” and “Who help Zero feel better?”.
A useful writing prompt I used was:
“Who was your favorite character in the story? Why?”
The writing response:
“My favorite character is Infinity because infinity is endless. Infinity was a good guy in this story because he was nice to Zero.”
The following week, we read “The Doorbell Rang”, which was a story about 12 cookies being shared in different ways as more and more friends and family members show up at the door.
After reading this story, , we did the following exercises to encourage writing.
How are the cookies shared throughout the story?
What other number, just like 12, divides many other numbers also?
Write your own story using the number 100. If you have 100 of your favorite cookies, how would you share them in a story?
So the child wrote:
“There were 100 vanilla cookies for one person. His name is Tiger. He was going to eat it all by himself. Then his sister, Rainbow, came in the house. Then Tiger share them with Rainbow. They each had 50 vanilla cookies.”
Check out Part 2 next week for the other two strategies to be shared: “If you could choose…” Questions and Math Magic Tricks
Written by Mandy Lam
Comentarios