Math Woes (4th grade) – Please pray with me

Hmmm, I too have been playing catch up with math for a while with my 11yo soon to be 6th grader.  I have felt frustrated at times – and we are always working on “last year’s” material.  3rd grade – very hard for her to learn her mult facts – she is just not good at recall. Period.  4th grade – she was back in public school and had good grades in math, but no retention.  I still don’t know quite what happened there, but I knew we couldn’t have another year like that, so back home and doing 4th grade math for a while, long division…then tried to use Right Start for the first time.  It just wasn’t for us.

So back to the trusty Math Mammoth for fractions, and spent the rest of the year on fractions to be somewhat ready for the state mandated end of the year testing.  The math was not a complete disaster, but she did not get a great score. (Very high in the critical thinking portion though LOL she is great at figuring things out, not good at rapid recall – in 20 years which skill will be the most useful?)  I have the full math mammoth curriculum, but I admit to being tempted by the Mathmatical Reasoning series from Critical Thinking Company.  We do use their Math Detective as supplement.

The best thing we did last year was integrate some living books in math – Number Stories of Long Ago was a big hit as a read aloud (we did not do the problems at the end of each chapter, just enjoyed thinking about the story).  And we watched a great video The Story of 1 – that the kids still talk about.  I hope to watch it again this year to revisit the topic.  Also watched some mathy videos on you tube like the great Donald Duck video where he plays billiards and decribes the golden section, and one about fractions that really provided a “light bulb moment” for my daughter with equivalent fractions.

Here is what I think about your situation – my 7yo son will be starting Math Mammoth gr 2 as well.  Your daughter must be much more mature and capable than my little one, who is 7-going-on-3 LOL.  I bet you all will progress quickly, don’t be afraid to move ahead.  I have read research about delaying math study until kids are older and accomplishing in a number of months what took years in early elem.  

I found that the “facts” really worked for my daughter once we started actually using them to do math – all the practice was not moving her forward.  You may find that as well.

Just yesterday I was having a gentle talk with my daughter about our math goals for this year – my goal for her is to think about the work – not just get through the problems.  I talked to her about working hard, but working smart, being aware of the math concepts as she is working her problems, that we are looking for comprehension, not quantities of problems completed.  This year I want to try the grade level work with Math Mammoth – 6th grade. We would be working at “grade level” for the first time… My expectations – those are my problem, not hers.  I am trying to not lower my expectations, but eliminate them as much as possible to see what she can do.

Sorry to go on for so long, but this has been on my mind as well.

:::Virtual Hug to you::: I am hoping for a productive math year for all of us!

Christie, I see you have a photo now as your avatar–nice to see your smiling face! (I have no photos to upload unfortunately….I’m starting to feel a kinship with the Amish.)

I understand what you are going through and will pray for your families. I could use prayer for mine, especially my son. DD’s are doing okay with MEP math, although I feel as though I dropped the ball with fact memorization (inconsistent and too much boring drill). 10yo dd is a little behind on facts….she knows the concepts well but still counts on her fingers for higher numbers and is still working on multiplication facts. Otherwise, she is doing very well in math. 13yo dd is starting to flourish in math in spite of her earlier disdain for it.

12yo ds has learning difficulites (autism), and he has always struggled with math. Most of the time now, he dislikes doing math lessons and just wants to take a worksheet and get it over with. Half of the time last year, we only got through 2 of the 4 sets of problems on his MEP 2A practice sheet before he gave up on it. I have been considering Math Mammoth for the upcoming year. I hate to keep changing materials with him, but nothing seems to click with him. We have been working on memorizing addition facts for over a year now, and he gives answers for most of the doubles facts rather quickly, but we’ve only gotten as far as 3+ and he forgets them often. We play active games while we practice them (shooting a foam ball into a wastebasket after he repeats a fact several times, etc.) and I made colorful flash cards placed up high (per Dianne Craft’s article, “Right Brain Math”), but he still struggles.

When my daughters were in the process of memorizing multiplication facts, I would allow them to use their multiplication table to refer to while working on word problems or double-digit problems. Otherwise, a lot of mistakes would be made by guessing at products or it would take forever to complete. I’m wondering now if I ought to allow my son to use addition cards with the answer while he is working on problems with the higher numbers.

I’m hoping to find someone locally who has used Math Mammoth so I can take a closer look at it. The sample pages don’t quite give me a complete picture of what the day-to-day math lessons would be like.

Are the End of Year tests available on the website to use for placement, or do you have to purchase them? I’m not sure if I can get him to take a really long test, though it would be very helpful for me to know what he remembers and what he has caught onto.

I will certainly pray for you about this as I went through a very similar circumstance with my dd9. MUS had a good start but too many holes in the program, then we used Rod & Staff Arithmatic to fill in those holes. That only lasted so long because she needed more than what it offered. it was a frustrating proceeds with tears on her part and private tears on my part. Then I said sod it, and put her in Teaching Textbooks because maybe ( quite possibly ) I could not teach her math well enough. I saw sighing a months wort of lessons a CHANGED child. things started to really click for her as she did the lesson on CD then did the lesson in the book. IT was AWESOME to see her SO excited to do math. I will never turn back. It totally works for us and I praise the Lord for blessing us when I gave it up to Him and swallowed my teaching pride. I know He will bless you as you turn this over to him too. And by the way, there are sample lessons your child can try on their website. We went back and did grade 3 math and it has made all the difference. Now she is back on track for starting grade 4 and happy as a clam.

As a mathematician, I feel that I should have the answers for anything and everything related to math.  But I don’t.  I do wish we all lived in the same small town, so that I could sit down with these children and see if I could reach them using any and every modality to teach them until it clicked…then I could teach YOU how to teach them. 

I remember one time a boy I could not seem to reach.  I could not for the life of me figure out what his learning style was.  I worked with him everyday for 8 weeks…and the 8 weeks was almost over and I didn’t feel we were making significant enough progress except to identify problems.  His mom sweetly kept trusting me, and I kept plugging away at it (what else could I do)…and then one day I went to working with him on neg and pos numbers and out of sheer desperation I went to the cabinet and got out some uncooked rice and pop corn kernals (not popped) and did my best (with no lesson plan or guide book but completely on the fly making it up as I went to teaching)…and click…just like that we had the ah ha…but it wasn’t ah ha…neg and pos numbers…though that came (I did send him home with two bags of our new manipulatives :-)…it was learning style.  I am by no means an expert on learning styles, but in my lay experience I have found that most people have two learning styles…a dominant one and a secondary. 

For instance, I am AUDIO (really strong audio…but my secondary is kinetic…I need to do it, touch it…etc.)…so writing something down in college put it right to my brain, cause as I wrote hearing the professor say it, I said it to myself as I wrote it and physically I manipulated that pencil and felt the scratching it into the paper…I am even thirdly a bit visual (much smaller) and after training myself for years as a mathematician to be more visual…I also saw it in my mind’s eye or even saw where the professor was standing in the room when he said it (one reason that sitting in the same spot each day can help some students).  I rarely had to ever look back at my notes, because I was using my dominant, my secondary, and even my weak third learning modality. 

Well, with this boy, I only ever discovered ONE style.  It was kinetic.  And because it was so dominant as to overshadow any others…if he didn’t act it out, touch it, move it, physically manipulate each and every thing for each and every concept…nothing happened in the learning department.  NOTHING.  When this light bulb exploded for me…and his mother later that day…we rejoiced.  And sure enough the rest of the 8 weeks was great.  I coached his mom, and when I heard back from her, math had become his favorite subject instead of the dreaded hated one. 

I am telling you this to try to encourage you to not be weary in well doing.  And dare I say it, not to rely heavily on curriculum.  Sometimes curriculum is not necessarily the answer.  They all have different sequences/scopes.  And none of them are necessarily RIGHT.    Take the time to think about how your children learn.  Find ways to incorporate that into the lessons.  This might require thinking, research, trial and error, asking for help, etc.  Your child is an individual.  The 3rd grade or 4th grade label is just that, a label. Don’t beat yourself up over the “grade” level they are at.  Try to reach mastery of the basics before it is time for Algebra.  I suggest trying to teach Algebra in 8th or 9th grade IF possible.  SO ALL of the elementary and middle years can be spent getting the basics down (see previous posts about the basics—if can’t find, let me know.). 

I wish I had the answers.  I wish we all lived close.  I wish I really could sit down with these children (someone would have to watch my littles! :-), and that I could help you come up with some real workable solutions.  But since I don’t, please know that I know YOU can do it.  And I will add you to my prayers.  If ANY ‘woman’ lack wisdom, let her ask of GOD, who gives to all generously and without criticizing, and it shall be given her.  AMEN!

May the Lord God uphold you during this time.  Keep on pressing on!

Jo

Hi Christie,

MathUSee is great. Although it is not recommended, our kids usually watch the video themselves and come and tell me what they’ve learned. If it doesn’t make any sense, I go and watch it with them and help.  This has never taken a long time.  The videos are usually very short in the early levels.  They generally understand the concept quite quickly (and these are not math geniuses) and then can be quite independent for the rest of the lesson (6 practice sheets).

We do store the blocks in the MUS box.  It is wooden, nicely organized with a see-through slide out cover.  It is put away in a closet when not in use.  One set of blocks should be enough. There is plenty of review, word problems, and challenging material. 

Have fun!