Post # 17 Work, Labor and Multisensory Math

When we think of labor, we think of a job, a life's work.  It is said that work is what you do not want to do.  For many of us, our daily work is pure joy; for others, not so much.  My own father worked for 37 years as a public servant.  His duties included ordering supplies for the White House and inspecting the midcentury repairs on the Capitol Dome.  He was sometimes called in the middle of the night to initiate a repair or rectify a problem.  He received little overt recognition, save for the occasional White House Christmas card.

I think about the word 'labor' itself and how much effort it takes some of our students to master those pesky math facts. I remember one older elementary student began to cry when he said his father was going to make him start practicing with flash cards again.  His tearful response was, "I’m not going to do it!"  Clearly he had experienced frustration and feelings of ineptitude.  The NCTM asks teachers to help students develop staying power and tenacity in problem solving.  For my students with challenges, I call it academic stamina.

Word retrieval is so very difficult for many of our most fragile learners.  I love that term “fragile.”  I love it because for some students repeated experiences of failure can doom the capacity to risk trying yet again.   One participant used it recently in a communication with me.  It so aptly describes the emotional state of so many students who struggle day after day and are humiliated day after day by those timed drills. They constitute too many facts required at one time for recall.  

There are ways to make learning math facts less tedious, some methods can be almost fun.  Certainly we can offer the facts of the day for use, and then use them consistently to reinforce memory.  We need to choose fewer facts and practice them with efficiency. We must practice fewer facts at a time to develop fluency over time.

Let us use a more humane method for developing fluency.  Let us practice fewer facts and practice them to mastery in a multitude of ways. Allow students to create their own near point references to use during class rather than giving them a “multiplication chart” already filled out…which constitutes just a less efficient calculator.  Let us keep them in the forefront of our activities and keep some manipulative or representation close by in case our word retrieval fails us...at that moment, or across several moments, until it does not fail us at all. Let us help children understand that though learning math facts is important, a skill that takes dedication and practice...as Red says to Rover in the comic strip- "the multiplication tables won't stay up all night with you when you are running a fever." 

By choosing the facts we will use during a lesson, practicing those facts early in the lesson and then employing them throughout the lesson, we build multiple experiences to support memory.  This is one focus of my approach to the Steeves Lesson Plan.  It is one thing I will look for in assigned projects.  Let’s hold that though for a video conference.