Math and Children

      Math is a hard subject for kids. I believe one way to avoid mathophobia is to help young kids build their basic skills to the fullest. Once you have a base of your basic skills it is easy to build onto them. But if you fall behind at such a young age it will be hard to catch up. You will always fill like you are struggling and not be able to learn new material. I believe this is where mathophobia comes from. There are many ways we can help children learn their basic math skills. Math games, repetition, extra help, math flashcards, homework and math websites are ways to help kids. One math trick that I never learned as a child is a technique called touch points, this helps children with addition and subtraction. Touch points are points placed on the numbers in strategic places. A 2 would have a point at the top of the two and the bottom of the two. If a child was adding 8+2 he would start with eight and count each point on the number 2 to get the answer 10. These touch points are to help the children to avoid counting on their fingers. It makes them look at the numbers and actually count to get their answer. With subtraction the technique is the same. The children count backwards using their touchpoints. If the problem is 11-6, the 6 would have its strategically placed touch points on it. The children would start at 11 and point to each touchpoint and say 10,9,8 and so on. Finally arriving at their answer of 11-6=5. I really like this technique, I learned it in my field work that I am currently doing at Sheaffe Road Elementary. The children really seem to be benefitting from this technique. Every morning the Children in my class do a full worksheet of touch point problems. This backs up my theory of repetition helping build math skills. I am seeing a improvement in these kids math skills day by day.
          Math games also help children with math in many ways. It helps them not be as scared of math because it makes math fun. It also helps them learn as they are having fun. One game you could play is called block sharing. You give each child a sheet with blank math problems on it. Every child also has a certain number of blocks. The children must go around the classroom until they fill their page with every combination of addition and subtraction problems with the numbers 1-10 by trading blocks. The kids get to walk around, talk to one another, and work together. The teacher should encourage the kids to help each other, if someone finishes they should be walking around giving other kids positive help and encouragment. The children should be fully supervised during this process because a bunch of young kids walking around a classroom can easily get distracted.
         Math websites are very helpful to children. They are interactive and can work out the problem for the child if he or she gets it wrong. It can repeat problems that the child gets wrong and help them implement the techniques. This gives the child multiple times to work on the same problem and perfect their skills. There are many websites and you can find them by simply googling them. Parents can use them with their kids or teachers can use them with their whole classroom. All of these math tools can help children with their math skills.

Post 2 Professions and math

       Children always ask when are we going to use any of this math in real life? Most teachers ignore it, maybe because they don't have an anwser for their curious students. There are many ways teachers can choose to anwser this question for thier students. They could teach the children that the math work itself such as fractions or probablity may not be specifically used but the thinking principals behind it will be. Math is a critically thinking subject, in life we need to be problem solvers and therefore math can give us the background for this. A teacher could also approach this question from the students at a different angle. Starting off with when the students grow up they want to make lots of money. Than the teacher can ask how do they expect to manage this money? What if your spending $500 a week in grocery's but at the end of the month you don't have enough money to pay your heating bill? As adults we have to manage our money so we have enough for all of our bills. This takes a lot of addition, subtraction and even multiplication. If you have a weekly bill in order to find out how much money you will need for one month you must multiply the weekly bill by four weeks. Without the use of math many adults could be missing bills simply because they couldn't manage their money. They didn't have the important math skills that we as elementary students are learning now.

            Another way we can tell the students how they will use math in real life is by telling them that depending on their occupation as they become adults they may use a lot of the math. We can make a list of different jobs that require math so the students can visually see how important it is. We can even ask the students what they want to be when they grow up and relate each occupation to math skills. Children say things like; I am going to be a mechanic they dont use math, or I am going to be a sports broadcaster, they don't use math. But in actuality these students are incorrect. Almost every profession uses math skills or math thinking processes in some way. Some professions that use math could surprise your students and even yourself. One job using math is a car stereo installer, this falls under the category of a mechanic. When they are installing the stereo they must know things such as what are decibels, different size gauge wires, what size hole do you need to fit a 10in speaker in, and what size fuses do I need? All of these questions are answered by doing basic math skills. Another job that you use math in that could be surprising to students is a sports broadcaster. The broadcaster must figure out  batting averages, how many bases did the last player steal, what the score is and how much time is left in the game. A radio DJ uses math in his career also. Explain to your students that a radio DJ are the people they listen to on the radio probably everyday. They use math because they need to know things like how many 4 minute songs can they fit into a 30 minute music block and when is the next commercial. They need to know how many minutes until the next commercial so they know how long they need to talk for or if they have time for another song. These are a few professions that use math everyday that would surprise students. Other professions using math are pilots, engineer, architect, software engineer, computer programmer, astronaut, and the list goes on and on. This shows math is used in the real world, not only in your own personal life but in many different professions that could surprise students.
The websites I used in the articles http://weusemath.org/careers and www. stephencarr.com/mathjobs.html

Post 1 Mathophobia

Mathophobia is when people are scared of math without having true reason for it. When people walk into a math class and automatically groan or complain that they are terrible at math and will never be able to get through the class. This is setting yourself up for failure and we need to have a positive attitude no matter what class we walk into. As an over all population we are known as mathophobics. I do suffer from this because math was never my strong point, I had difficulty with many math classes including my sophomore year of high school math which I failed not once but twice. I believe I suffer from mathophobia because in elementary school I never fully got the basics of math down. Math is a building subject and without basic skills you quickly fall behind and than give up. I believe that the majority of people suffering from Mathophobia have this same problem with basic skills. I'm hoping that this class will help me with basic skills and before I begin teaching I know I will have to work hard on perfecting my basic skills. As an elementary teacher I would help my students to learn there basic skills properly in order to hopefully begin eliminating mathophobia for future students and future Americans.

Math is very important and as adults there is no way to avoid doing math. We need it for banking, shopping, budgeting and everyday common tasks. Because math is used so much even on a basic level it is surprising that adults do not over come their mathophobia. How adults get around using math is by relining on others, calculators or just giving up in general. Many adults wouldn't even know if they had been over charged on a bill or under tipping a waitress because they are ignoring the numbers all together. Children see their mother's, father's, or guardians afraid of math and therefore do not get support on their homework and they to have mathophobia.  

The videos we watched relating to homophobia showed how the world views math. The carton Kim Possible had an entire episode on the "villains" of math, this has the possibility of scaring kids of math from a very young age. This could have a lasting effect on the children without them even realizing it, it is singling out math as a scary subject. The "Who wants to a millionaire" show with Patricia Heaton as a quest relates directly to mathophobia. A question comes up about math and before the question is complete she freaks out and refuses to answer. Patricia is a grown adult and this shows us that even adults suffer from mathophobia.

As a teacher I will aspire to help students over come mathophobia and hopefully begin to end mathophobia.