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Peter Kronfeld

5-Year-Olds Can Learn Calculus - Luba Vangelova - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...284124

education math learning play

shared by Peter Kronfeld on 13 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • But this progression actually “has nothing to do with how people think, how children grow and learn, or how mathematics is built,” says pioneering math educator and curriculum designer Maria Droujkova.
  • The current sequence is merely an entrenched historical accident that strips much of the fun out of what she describes as the “playful universe” of mathematics
  • “Calculations kids are forced to do are often so developmentally inappropriate, the experience amounts to torture,” she says. They also miss the essential point—that mathematics is fundamentally about patterns and structures, rather than “little manipulations of numbers,” as she puts it.
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  • Studies [e.g.,  this one, and many others referenced in this symposium] have shown that games or free play are efficient ways for children to learn, and they enjoy them.
  • start by creating rich and social mathematical experiences that are complex (allowing them to be taken in many different directions) yet easy (making them conducive to immediate play). Activities that fall into this quadrant: building a house with LEGO blocks, doing origami or snowflake cut-outs, or using a pretend “function box” that transforms objects (and can also be used in combination with a second machine to compose functions, or backwards to invert a function, and so on).
  • What is learned without play is qualitatively different. It helps with test taking and mundane exercises, but it does nothing for logical thinking and problem solving.
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