Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Math facts concern

I was poking around in Aimee Yermish's blog the other day, and she had the story of a kid who couldn't memorize the quadratic formula no matter how hard he tried (due to 2e issues), but could derive it in 30 seconds - so the first 30 seconds of a test he'd spend working it out, and then be fine.

Short answer:

solid grasp on basic arithmetic =/= rote recall of maths facts!

Longer answer:

I'd say it depends how long she takes to work it out. If she is laboriously counting on her fingers and it's taking her half a minute to get to an answer, that's a problem. If she's getting the answer in, say, 5 seconds, then even if there are fingers involved, at her age I'd say that's not a problem, and provided she has good conceptual understanding and enjoys maths I'd be happy to assume that greater speed will come.

There are loads of computer games, and indeed board games, that require arithmetic and where you do better the faster you are. Why not pick a few that are acceptable to you and that you think she'll like, and require her to play computer games for 30 mins every day, if that'd go down better? My DS loves some of the games at http://www.mangahigh.com for example, e.g., Sigma Prime, where you shoot prime numbers at incoming composite numbers to factorise them.

Thanks - I'll try that or some of the resources on the other page. She can get to the answer very quickly and fairly accurately using the finger method. This is easy when it is a straight forward calculation, 11-4, for example. On EPGY it asks questions like 11-x=7, solve for x. They never teach any algebra at this level, so I think she is just supposed to know that x=4 because she knows that math fact. She was unable to move forward in the program because I have not taught her the algebra and she does not know this as a math fact. The other problem calculation she had the other day was as follows:

"Mom, how much time do I have to read tonight?"
"Well it is 7:46 and it is lights out at 8:00, you tell me"

I was really surprised that she could not figure that out.

I've been mentioning this on all the math threads but only because I love it so much. Bedtime math . Com. Sign up for the email they send you a new word problem every day and that's the only thing they send you.

I haven't used EPGY, but let me stick my neck out and say that if they are expecting people to be able to do that just because they recognise 11, 4 and 7 as going together, that's really terrible pedagogy (e.g., it might lead to the same child solving 7-x=11 wrongly by the same method!). I bet that's not what they intend. Seems more likely that your DD didn't properly understand the question - is that possible?

We used to play "secret number game", which goes "The secret number is called x, and the clue is that 11-x=7", which DS used to love from very young.

Algebra is easy, but something does have to be done to explain what that label x means.

Many children at this age don't really understand digital time. Could she have counted up minute by minute, 7:47,....7:59,8:00, or would she have gone on 7:60,7:61 etc.? I forget at what age, but I remember being surprised by my (very mathy) DS doing the latter at some point.

my two cents: my DD6 is similar to your daughter. A whiz at math concepts and tested at third grade in that area while four years old, but was never a math facts wizard. She also learned to read with no apparent effort so I think it was just surprising that she actually had to put in effort to learn. Math facts was this Achilles heel. I used to be anti flashcards, but for math facts, they seem to have their place. We don't do them that often. I intend to, but it just doesn't happen. The reason I finally approached it that way was because I was afraid that her upcoming first grade teacher might judge her ability based on math fact automaticity over conceptual ability and I didn't want that to hold her back. I was never that gifted at math facts and was not drilled with them either (I wish I had been) but I was accelerated in math eventually and on a math team so it didn't seem to hold me back. I see the same pattern in my daughter: most gifted in verbal areas, strong in pattern recognition etc. but not as strong in math facts. My solution is to try to help bring that one weak area up to the level of everything else. It is frustrating and boring though (for mom and daughter) to do flashcardss. My daughter doesn't do much on the computer, doesn't use an I-pad or any video games but I know some people use those for learning math facts. Hang in there. My daughter is getting better and better at math facts from repeated exposure. I think we are just not used to our gifted kids needing repetition and practice so this seems to be a big issue when even their weak spot is still beyond grade level.

mom123, we haven't ever used EPGY so please take what I say with a grain of salt... but fwiw based on our kids' school experience in early elementary:


When my kids first had problems like this appear in math, it wasn't with the idea that they should just "know" the answer because it was a math fact, it was the beginning of teaching the children the concept of how to solve for an unknown, and it was introduced before timed drills in math facts.


FWIW, only one of my three kids really had the concept of adding time like this take hold easily. I was equally surprised and really don't know why! Sometimes I wonder though if it's possibly related to living in a world of digital clocks?

polarbear

I think maybe turning time into anything else, e.g. angle or numbers, just is fundamentally a hard concept for some (many? most?) people. My DS took a surprisingly long time to learn to read an analogue clock face reliably, and I might blame it on digital clocks, if it weren't for the fact that my only memory of finding anything hard in the first few years of school involved page after page of clock faces to interpret!

I read somewhere (can't remember where) that preschool children can be taught and gain a lot of knowledge in specific areas and that this knowlege easily disappears a couple of years down the road when the focus has been shifted to something else. The examples were mostly in the domain of history and science.

I actually would not be overly concerned with the math facts as those should improve with normal practice unless your DD has a processing or memory issue. It is more disheartening that she lost almost two years of math concepts, especailly at the early elementary levels where the concepts tend to be intuitive. I would have her work in EPGY from her current level and you may be reassured when you see how quickly she leaps past the second and third grade work.

The only time that I have witnessed a noticeable drop in math ablity was in a child with mild autistic symptoms who displayed almost savant type math abilities at a young age and those abilities disappeared when the autistic symptoms improved substantially.