Sponsored by Mathnasium of Southlake
By Meredith Jones, Center Director Mathnasium of Southlake
Many of us have fond memories ofbrour elementary and middle school classrooms. brThere were colorful posters on the walls, chalk dust on the floor andbrlarge, wooden desks with pencil marks from years of students passingbrthrough. However, the one thing many ofbrus do not remember in the classrooms is a calculator.
Within the past 15 years,brcalculator usage has become much more common in the elementary and middlebrschool classrooms. While this technologybrcan be an effective tool for teaching problem-solving skills and exploringbrpatterns, it can also be a hindrance to a student's basic fluency skills. Manybrstudents are becoming 100% dependent on a calculator for their addition,brsubtraction, multiplication and division problems. Their reasoning behind using the calculatorbris that traditional pencil and paper is too hard, or it takes too long. However, the main problem with this is thatbrtheir mental math and number sense skills tend to diminish more quickly thanbrthey develop. For instance, the conceptbrof subtraction, such as 10,000 – 2,798 is first introduced in secondbrgrade. It is then practiced in thirdbrgrade, and mastered in fourth grade. brMost people stop at that point and think that the student will magicallybrremember how to subtract and borrow for the rest of their life, when inbrreality, it is expected that the student reinforce this concept all the waybrthrough eighth grade. After a few monthsbrwithout practice, the “mastered” skill is no longer retained.
I have many middle-schoolbrstudents come to Mathnasium that have completely forgotten how to subtractbrusing pencil and paper, or by using an even better tool – their minds. My students are shocked to learn that theybrare not allowed to use a calculator on most work at Mathnasium, and that theybrwill learn to understand numbers by developing mental math skills that willbrstick with them for the rest of their lives. brOnce these students are able to understand numbers without simply pluggingbrthem into a calculator, they are able to know if their answers to problems arebrreasonable and make sense. Students' future success in school and college is atbrrisk if they fail to develop such skills.
“Much to our surprise, we must conclude that there is a (negative)brconnection between our college mathematics grades at Johns Hopkins Universitybrand heavy calculator usage in K-12. Calculators clearly have a place in thebrclassroom but we suspect that they are sometimes misused,” according to a studybrfrom Johns Hopkins University professors W. Stephen Wilson and Daniel Naiman.
Calculators do have their place in thebrclassroom, but they are definitely not a substitute for developing a student'sbrability to analyze a problem; compute answers and decide if their answer isbrreasonable. Drop by Mathnasium ofbrSouthlake to learn more about how we teach math in a way that makes sense and canbrset up your student for success.
For more information on Mathnasium and our curriculum, please visit our website at Mathnasium of Southlake, call (817) 421-1900 or drop by the center at 1251 E. Southlake Blvd., Suite 305 and see how we make learning fun.