At what point should we begin stepping up the game in primary education, so that students have distinct advantages later on? Learning the fundamentals like multiplication and addition, subtraction and division is indeed essential to any youngster's repertoire of basic skills; however, such rote approaches toward education often leave much to be desired. After all, we do not want any more robots entering society, but rather high-functioning sapient beings.
3rd Grade Enrichment
Recently, I was talking to a teacher who was discussing her enrichment program for third graders. She was originally from Russia, and as we all know, cultures such as the Russian and Asian ones are known for producing stronger math students than their American counterpart. One could peruse the literature and research to find reasons for the divergence in performance in mathematics between American and other "math-strong" cultures; however, the plain truth is that there is no substitute for genuine hard work, diligence, and application when it comes to learning any discipline, which of course would include mathematics.
During my conversation with this teacher, she made it clear to me that it was important to start stimulating the minds of our children early on, rather than wait until a later time when we believed such was more fitting. In other words, why not give the children challenging math problems in third grade so as to get them thinking like problem solvers, rather than just be satisfied with their having learned the basic core for their age group?
To illustrate her point, this teacher showed me a sample of problems that were presented to her students in her after school enrichment program. One problem was the rather well known "sock problem," and it goes like this: John has 10 blue socks, 9 black socks, and 7 white socks in a draw. The lights go out during the middle of the night and he has to pick out a pair of matching socks. What is the minimum number he must select to insure he has a matching pair?
Solving the Sock Problem
As you can see, this is not a typical 3rd grade math problem. Not only is this a word problem, which always gives kids fits, but also one which requires that the children tap into their creative thought processes. At first blush, many of the students might cower before such problems; but with enough exposure to this sort of thing, the students start to tap into higher cognitive functions and actually start to enjoy the challenges that these problems present.
In such a problem as the sock one, students should be prompted to actually do the problem as if this reality confronted them; after all, the true end of problem solving is to learn to apply the methods to real life. If the students are prompted to try this out, most likely they can come up with the solution. Ask them to start selecting socks to see what happens. Emphasize that they want to be sure that they get at least two matching socks. Prompt them to question how this can be done and what might go wrong to prevent a match. The students will say something like, "Okay. Let me choose a sock. It can be blue, black, or white. Suppose it is blue. I need another blue, but I can choose a black and then a white. But then on the fourth try, I would have to have at least one match." Thus the answer is four picks as minimum.
If students are taught these problem solving strategies early on, they become much stronger at handling challenging tasks. Rote learning is needed to establish certain fundamentals, but creative problem strategies are essential to making kids overall good students. Once this process is initiated, even young 3rd graders learn to become fantastic budding mathematicians!
References
- Sylvan Learning. 3rd Grade Basic Math Success. New York: Random House, 2010.
Joe Pagano - Joe is a prolific writer, author, poet, and linguist, who has published over 200 articles and several books on a broad array of ...
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