Post # 16 Neuroplasticity and Multisensory Math

Neuroplasticity, what a word. It represents the brain’s ability to reshape itself and organize itself to react to what the body needs and does. In Judith Willis’ book, Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning, the scientist turned educator describes how the brain changes in order to maximize its capabilities in relation to its volume.  The brain can add gray matter and reinforce neural connections when demand requires it to do so.  Thus an action repeated over and over again, leads to additional neural connections and gray matter dedication in response to activity.  She cites as examples the area dedicated to use of the fine motor skills of the left hand in a violinist’s brain and the strengthened areas of the visual cortex in the brain of a juggler.  Most importantly, she cites research suggesting that the more sensory areas used in learning a task, the stronger the neural connections, the associations for learning, memory and fluency.  

I often relate the memorization of the times tables to learning the names of one hundred forty four countries and their capitals.   Given one in isolation, the student must retrieve the name of the other.  Sometimes the country.  Sometimes the capital.  It is a devious plot to weed out the inefficient memorizers.  We know that children who fail to learn their number facts are frequently coded as having a math learning disability which is really more of a language deficit.  They may be offered the accommodation of a calculator and all targeted practice at math facts discontinued.  The thinking is that they will master isolated facts as they use them, but this is not true when each practice set contains too many differing sets of facts.  A use of a fact here and the use of it there does not constitute repetitive practice.

Dr. Willis also relates a more urgent concern for those of us in the field of teaching mathematics.  Her description of childhood brain growth suggests that students learning their math facts prior to age eleven need ample time to master this skill and repeated practice of isolated patterns.  Her rationale for repeated practice of any skill is strongly supported though she does not specifically target math facts.  This time in a child’s life, when there is a great, as she calls it, “growth spurt, with increase gray matter and connections reaching a maximum density at about age 11” is when our students are mastering those pesky multiplication facts.   

“When children are between the ages of 6 and 12, their neurons grow more and more synapses that serve as new pathways for nerve signals.  This thickening of gray matter (the branching dendrites of the neurons and the synaptic connections they form) is accompanied by thickening in the brain’s white matter (fatty myelin sheaths that insulate the axons carrying information away from the neuron and making the nerve-signal transmissions faster and more efficient. As the brain becomes more efficient, the less-used circuits are pruned away, but the most frequently used connections become thicker, with more myelin coating making them more efficient (Guild,2004).”    

This may seem too technical for us to use as a basis for instruction but it is incredibly important to understand and indeed to use.  Dr. Willis speaks to the advantages of using simultaneous processing and the need to offer information and practice it in multiple modalities.  This provides for duplication and multiple connections which serve memory and retrieval.

Now to put this into context.  For three weeks during the summer I ran a math camp for struggling middle school students.  I used many of the same strategies with a private student for three more weeks.  I used one times table throughout.  I placed strings of beads in front of the students and we touched as we counted the groups of seven.  Each group, a different color, allowed us to look at three groups of seven and say twenty one.  Dehane’s research on numeracy provided the context.  The research supporting multisensory practice and simultaneous processing added more.  Even the most multiplication deficient students left counting by sevens and retrieving the facts.  Each student used the facts over and over again throughout the lessons.  We multiplied by seven.  We divided by seven.  We formed fractions and common denominators in groups of sevens.  We place seven on a times table and then multiples of seven.  We named factors and multiples.  We found the least common multiple and the greatest common factor and perfect squares and roots…all with sevens.  We used other number facts too, but when we explored new material, it was always with sevens.  Students had their strings available and could construct the facts as needed if required.