My dd continues to struggle with math (sm)

[dorothy]

My dd age 7 is really struggling with basic math concepts. At first I thought it was a memorizing math facts problem, but no, she can memorize them, she just doesn't "get" them. We have tried numerous programs and use manipulatives, real life math, have taken breaks, etc, but she just does not make the connections.

She is above grade on all other subjects and has no apparent learning disorders. I am wondering if this is a maturity thing...should I just "drop" math for a while? Does anyone advocate this? I know that you play games in K but what if I only did math games?

I get hung up on the grade. She can't get past single-digit addition and subtraction. My ds 5 understands more math than she does and dd age 10 was doing simple multiplication in 2nd grade (I am not pointing this out to her, I am just stating it here to explain part of my anxiety).

She wants to understand and works in earnest. It is just not making sense to her.

Thank you for your advice.

[ELaurie]

I have been using Professor B math with my ds 8 for the past three years.
One aspect I particularly like is Professor B's use of teaching
stories. The "stories" are easy to understand, and readily applied. You will find a good example of this technique on the level 1 sample CD, upper subtraction facts lesson. As learners internalize story sequences, there is no need to memorize a series of "steps" to solve math problems. Learners comprehend why as well as how to approach problems in a particular way, and the stories are easily retained.

Prof B Sample CD (http://www.profb.com/Shop.aspx) click on the link at left to see the sample CDs.

I also like the way Professor B teaches facts as members of "fact families", rather than as a series of unrelated facts. IOW, students learn 2+3=5, 3+2+5, 5-3=2, and 5-2=3 all at the same time. This helps them grasp relationships between functions, and relationships between various facts. IMO, it's more difficult to see the bigger picture when they learn 2+3+5 as a +2 fact and 3+2+5 as a +3 fact, as if the two facts are unrelated.

The sample CDs are well done, and provide nice examples of the approach. If you have other que can answer, let me know :)


__________________

[Myrtle]

My dd age 7 is really struggling with basic math concepts. At first I thought it was a memorizing math facts problem, but no, she can memorize them, she just doesn't "get" them..
Thank you for your advice.

Can you be more specific? If she knows her addition and subtraction facts what is it that she's not getting? Is it word problems? Can you give an example of the kind of problem which she can't solve?

[dorothy]

She is lost. For example, she has memorized 4+4=8 but is always "surprised" when she is handling manipulatives. It's as if she does not SEE that four and four more will always actually make eight. Once 10 comes into it she is completely flumoxed. No matter how many times I show her a group of ten with tangible objects and show her to count up the ones, she has to start all over again.. She does not retain that there is a group of 10 and then some more. When we have tried adding 5+4=9, 5+14=19, she can do the first because it is memorized, but she does not get the concept of the second AT ALL.

[Myrtle]

She is lost. For example, she has memorized 4+4=8 but is always "surprised" when she is handling manipulatives. It's as if she does not SEE that four and four more will always actually make eight. Once 10 comes into it she is completely flumoxed. No matter how many times I show her a group of ten with tangible objects and show her to count up the ones, she has to start all over again.. She does not retain that there is a group of 10 and then some more. When we have tried adding 5+4=9, 5+14=19, she can do the first because it is memorized, but she does not get the concept of the second AT ALL.

Oh Dorothy, this is very close to the problem that my six year old is having! I successfully took two boys through a "conceptual" program and now I'm flumoxed as to why my daughter would have to spend over a year on learning her addition and subtraction facts within 10. Like you say, she doesn't "see" these things. At this point she has memorized her addition facts to 20 and doesn't use the "making ten method."

At any rate, I just went into the other room to ask my husband to confirm what I thought his opinion is (he has his MS in math) and he said that if the kid knows their math facts to proceed forward and not worry about the "concepts" with manipulatives. The whole point of the manipulatives is to make the math easier to understand, but if they are doing the math by hook or by crook then it's counterproductive to spend forever on the "gimmick" that is used to teach them what they already know.

I'll give you an example. In Saxon word problems they kids are taught to classify word problems as "Some, some more" or "Some, some went away" (I'm not sure of all the details, but this is what I can remember from the sheets that I've seen) Based on how the kid classifies the word problem he then knows he's supposed to subtract or add. However, that classification is supposed to help the kid. It is the case that some kids who already instinctively know how to do word problems naturally, end up being more confused by the gimmick than by simply doing the problem in a straight forward basis. In the case of these kids, it's better to let them just do the math. Likewise, if bar diagrams are a hurdle in preventing a kid from successfully completing word problems, let him write out his work and skip the bar diagram which is supposed to be an aid, it's not really "the concept."

My second son, who is as close to a "mathy" kid as I have, was confused by the visual triangular circles that are used in Singapore to demonstrate fact families. He could fill them in when I broke it all down into steps and trained him intensively on this, but somehow when it came to word problems he'd get it all mixed up in his head and show his work wrong. I ended up skipping this gimmick and explicitly teaching him what subtraction is, which is the inverse operation of addition. Now that doesn't sound very exciting or visual, but it turns out that real math concepts amount to dry definitions with symbols rather than all this manipulative stuff. The manipulatives are not the concept. The manipulatives demonstrate a concept, but then so do other things.

Here is what worked with my son. If A + B = C, then C - A = B.

Turns out that really is the defintion of subtraction. Very anticlimactic. So now he gets his numbers right because he remembers a formal definition of subtraction.

Now back to my daughter, we are simply going to go forward. If she doesn't understand the concept of "groups of ten" when she's seven, she's certainly understand it by the time she's in the seventh grade and has been taught how to decompose numbers, use the associative law, and will be able to express formally the thought that 7 + 8 = (7 - 2) + ( 2 + 8) = 15.

She'll know how to express multiplication as the product of two sums using the distributive law when she's in the 7th grade working on order of operations. If you are in a quality math program it will go back and teach the "whys" of arithemetic. That is ostensibly what algebra is supposed to be about, it's "generalized arithemetic" and any program worth its salt will have students go back and do operations on numbers using algebraic manipulations rather than algorithms so that in the long run they will understand "the concept" of what they were doing.

[Eliana]

Are you saying that she can't move on in her math program, or that the underlying concepts haven't clicked for her but she can do the problems?

If it is the former, I would back off of formal math and do games, manipulatives, or go sideways and find other ways she can work on this area where she's plateaued without feeling frustrated with herself (if this bores her sick, I'd drop it and come back later.) If even informal math is stressful for her, I would take a complete break.

If it is the latter, then I wouldn't worry about it. My eldest often needs to do things for a while before the underlying concept clicks. (She was this way when she was 6 and now that she's 14.5 and doing precalc she's still the same way... She also took 2 substantial breaks from math - once for a plateau, once for frustration, and several short ones, with no ill effect that I have seen.)


I have six kids (14.5, 13, 11, 9, 6 & 6) and the older 4 have all, at one point or another, needed adjustments to how we were doing math. Sometimes it was because they had advanced so quickly but then hit concepts they just weren't ready for, but often it was inexplicable. I have never (yet!) regretted those breaks and they are all well above 'grade-level' despite the breaks - my son spent a year puttering about measuring things and adding columns of numbers before leaping straight into algebra where he has been happily playing for the last... year and half? two years? (we moved recently and my time sense is very skewed.).

Anyway, I would use her frustration/unhappiness level as your gauge...

Eliana

[Lorna]

I would have no worries about taking time out to use math games. Make sure you are still doing an hour a day (but with games) and she will find it invaluable. She will catch up quickly once she has the fundamentals in place. I think this is a tricky stage and if the foundations are good she will go on to being very good at math.
Do you have unit cubes or a tens and units based manipulative, because that is what it sounds like she needs right now?
Good games for addition:
Use your favourite board game with two dice (it could be Monopoly, snakes and ladders, ludo)
Yahtzee - great for addition and multiplication. Our children love it.

[Lux Et Veritas Academy]

I have to agree with Lorna- My 10 year old struggles because he just doesn't have his math facts. He knows the math not the facts. I am trying to step it up and just stay right on it.:o

[TengoFive]

I would be tempted to just get a variety of manipulatives, especially rods and let her "play" with them for math time for a little while until it clicks into place for her. She could probably do fine in math if she has the facts memorized, but she'll just have to keep memorizing things that don't make sense to her. Maybe get some cuisenaire rods and an accompanying idea book for them.

[chiguirre]

If your daughter likes stories, you might like Serendipity's Gnomes and Gnumbers for a break from your regular math.

http://www.ebeth.typepad.com/serendipity/

The author is on a break, but there's already a lot of example pages posted.