7+4=2

7+4=2.  What is your take on this perception:?  http://about.uniteforliteracy.com/2017/05/7-4-2/

Is it true for adults?

Leecy WIse
Moderator
Reading and Writing CoP

Comments

Each of us, as people, are so uniquely fascinating. Sure, there are traits that are similar, but the combination of traits, skills, and experiences each of us has is astounding. When we can get individuals, no matter what their skills, traits, or experiences, working together, learning happens. It may not always be learning the intended outcomes. One can easily see this by attending any national or regional educational gathering. What do people remember most? It is often the interaction with peers that we learned the most from in spite of the often high priced presenter's efforts. We are a social creature and benefit from social exchange at many levels. When we can be social while trying to learn a common goal, educational floodgates are opened for all parties!

Although I support the idea that we all can learn from each other and learners need more opportunity to learn from others, I do have one objection to the article. The problem I have relates to the abuse of the language of mathematics. The symbols "+" and "=" have quite specific meanings in mathematics and many learners struggle with symbols, especially with "=". Sadly, articles like this and some of the bogus Facebook math problems that are shared completely obfuscate the real mathematical meanings. With so many people struggling to understand mathematics concepts, procedures and vocabulary, I dislike the abuse of the symbols because of the confusion it generates. 

Check out this problem (often seen on Facebook) as another example:

I HATE this problem. The intent was to say something like, given the two list of values are related to each other in such a way that when the same sequence of operations are performed on each pair, the results are given in the third column. In other words, given an input of 1 and 4 the patterns result is 5. Find the pattern that describes these number sequences. Even my attempt at instructions may not even hit all the correct mathematical terms, but at least it describes the intent in some way that does not misrepresent what the symbols mean. In the given problem, with + and = the answer must be 8 + 11 = 19 with a footnote that the previous three examples are incorrect. Threads like this have hundreds of thousands of responses arguing about what "the answer is" when the question was not even correctly given. 

The whole point is, many people abuse mathematical symbols to appear hip or clever. This abuse perpetuates the fallacy that "math is hard" or "I don't get it, so I must be bad at math". 

While I love the authors assertion that we can all learn to read by experiencing reading together, I reject the attempt at appearing clever at the expense of confusing the mathematically struggling learners we all know and love.

 

Ed, I could not agree with you more. And like you, although I resisted the use of the "catchy" equation to make the point and get attention, I totally support the fact that "we," in general, don't provide enough opportunities for students to learn from and with each other. Your use of board and other games listed in other discussions are great examples of how people can learn together. There are so many ways for us to get off the stage and let students teach themselves. I would love to have more ideas. What challenges do we face in that regard? What successes have learners experienced?

Leecy Wise, Moderator
Reading and Writing CoP
leecywise@gmail.com

 

Just a few thoughts, because this topic is a passion of mine and I don't stay up on stage too long here 

Lessons: I remember planning for a traditional lecture-based classes and I remember spending so much time setting up boundaries, procedures, and scripting a flow I felt comfortable with. In contrast, I know have quite a different planning for lessons. Now I start with what target learning I want to see demonstrated and I brainstorm ideas for how a student might share what they have learned and how I will assess those items. Then for each of those options, I look for resources that might support learners in some way. Finally, I create a hook or challenge to propose to the class to hopefully fire up their natural curiosity to want to explore. After class starts, I get them hooked, share the goal and how it may be demonstrated and introduce the resources available to learn and let the learning begin. It gets messy at times and I am constantly building up capacity for all of us to learn from each other so that I can act as a coach and mentor so much more than the sole holder of all knowledge. One of the biggest challenges I have seen with these types of lessons is in getting the students to shift from passive education (sit down, shut up and listen to me so you can do exactly what I ask you to do) to active education in which they are making choices, adapting approaches and learning to advocate for themselves when help is needed. Having former students in class helps a ton with this transition as they can often mentor or assist newer students in the shifts over. 

Games: You mentioned games, another passion of mine, and I am discovering more and more ways table top and digital games can help offer a sort of academic laboratory for investigation. From above, students should already have a hook or challenge to explore, and games can be one of the tools they may explore options One of the biggest challenges with games is that socially interactive, complex games can take some time to get used to. It may only be a couple hours, but I have had a few challenges with the jump being too much for some learners so I have had to build up to the target game(s) with easier options that push boundaries a bit slower. 

Community learning circles: This is a new experiment I have been engaging in lately. Essentially, these are open educational gatherings in which people are welcome to ask any questions or offer explorations they are interested in. Many times people come in expecting to learn about one topic but leave valuing what was learned by other questions posed. The challenge with this learning environment is in building a community of trust in which people feel comfortable to share their questions or inquiries in a group that may change composition often. Another challenge may be when people show up interested in learning but without any specific questions in mind. Of course, this is a nice situation in which I can fire off a thought or two and enjoy the discussion, learning and exploration that transpires. I think Socrates and other long dead educators engaged in similar social learning experiences?

Project based or Product based goals: As teachers we have target goals we hope to see demonstrated some way by learners. I set up parameters and limits and let students create an option they wish to pursue. Of course a product or something tangible as an end product is part of the process. Helping students develop these products/projects helps with goal setting and tracking as well as affording the options to put the learning more in context with the individual's career aspirations or life experiences. 

Just a few thoughts that come to mind. Would love to hear what others think and do. I did not fully address the idea of what successes, but I will leave this post with a related thought. I often get feedback from learners that their experiences with me helped them develop flexibility in thinking and much more confidence in advocating for his or her own learning. Those are successes in my mind and I continually work to help bolster those efforts to increase the ease of achieving those successes. Oh, yea, they also pass all those "important" tests I don't really value as much as many do