Learning Math

I would bet that my middle school (junior high) math classes were quite similar to the way you were taught math.  I watched the teacher work problems on the board and then I was given problems to practice.  I frequently rushed through my homework in an attempt to get it done as fast as possible so I could head to the tennis courts or shoot baskets in the driveway.  After a couple of weeks, I was given a “unit test” which was supposed to assess whether or not I had learned the material.  Having some natural ability in math, I usually scored well on the tests.   

However, school is not where I really learned math.  I learned math on my summer car vacations adding up miles on creased, fold-up maps; and by figuring the amount of gasoline our lumbering Buick Estate Wagon gobbled up on trips to the Texas coast.  I got pretty good at predicting arrival times based on our average speed and distance left to travel.  I learned to compute with fractions by helping my dad and older brother refurbish a hulking wooden sailboat and build a two-story fort that protected our back yard from neighborhood rapscallions.  I learned probability by playing cards and dice games, which eventually led to me reading Scarnes New Complete Guide to Gambling when I was twelve-years-old.  It is a pretty heavy read for a seventh grader, but I made some pocket money in my teens because I knew the odds in blackjack.


So, where are our kids really learning math today?  At Carolina Day School, they are learning math in school.  Surprise.  They are learning math because they are using math.  

In eighth-grade, students play with motion by building and zooming balloon-jet cars across the floor.  They plot rates of change on graphs and understand that slope is more than just a line on a page in a book.  In seventh grade, students measure and cut popsicle sticks to form specific geometric shapes.  They create these from scale drawings, and, in addition to getting practice with angles, they learn that precision is sometimes critical.  Our sixth graders design and run their own experiments and determine what types of graphs and charts best display the generated data.  Analysis and use of data is crucial to our students’ understanding the world around them.

Learning has little use unless you can do something with the knowledge.  Doing something implies action, and CDS students do much more than sit in class absorbing facts and algorithms. They build, observe, compute, design, record, analyze, and judge -- and in doing these things, they actually learn math.