There’s this one kid who always seems to be underfoot when I go home at the end of the day. Everyone claims he’s my youngest son. Even he claims it’s so. Who knows? I do seem to have quite a few memories of him being around since the moment he was born. I walk through the door when I get home and the first word out of his mouth is, “Daddy!” Followed closely by that most improbable statement of the obvious, “You’re home.”
He’s a sweet kid. At five years of age, he’s started kindergarten. He spells every word he can. He asks how to spell every word he does not know the spelling of himself. He describes numbers (what 12 looks like, for example), and challenges me to the difficult math questions, such as “What is three plus two, Dad?”
“Five?”
“Yep, that’s correct!”
It should always be so easy, even when the question is “What is 159 divided by nine?” Or “In this equation, what is the square root of the value of x?” Go ahead, insert the wildest Einstein’s-blackboard math problem you can think of here.
By the time a young person arrives in fourth grade, the math concepts have ramped up considerably. Yet it is no time to rest, as the curve only continues to climb, the principles only get more intense, and the work only gets more theoretical.
Beyond testing, what are your favorite ways for making sure your students are solid when it comes to understanding required math concepts? Do you prefer partner games? Do you have your students make up their own word problems?
Come in. Sit down. Put up your feet and share with us at the Upper Grades Exchange.