By Joanne Arcand
Kids today grow up with a weird combination of English and what I like to call text-speak. My five year old listened to my knock knock joke and , instead of pretending to laugh like I would have done, smiled and said “LOL, mom”. They have a dizzying array of short-forms from “brb” (be right back) to “hih” (hope it helps) and they have neither a cell phone or a twitter account.
Algebra is Like Twitter
With all these short forms in their vocabulary, I expect it will be easy to get into the first few lessons of algebra. Algebra is the fifteenth century version of twitter, an attempt to shorten mathematical sentences when papyrus was in such short supply that sheets more than six months old were wiped clean and reused.
Short forms such as ‘x’ meaning “some number that I don’t know yet” or “>” for “greater in value than” are more recent than we think. For example, the equal sign wasn’t even thought of until the sixteenth century- the first published equal sign was in a paper written in 1557.
I often find it helpful to switch out of the shorthand form when explaining equations or expressions (expressions are number sentences that don’t have equal signs) to Grade 5 or 6 students. I also occasionally change the letters to symbols. It’s shorthand, after all, and it’s only helpful if you remember what it means. For example, let’s use an equation for speed from Grade 6 Math.
D= 3t (the Grade 5’s would draw a footprint instead of the ‘D’ and a clock instead of the ‘t’)
Looks like algebra right? The fourteenth century mathematicians would look at this and tug on their beards in confusion as well. They would be more used to the sentence like this:
The distance I travel can be found by multiplying 3 by the number of hours.
or, in computer speak:
if I input the number of hours and multiply by 3, I’ll get the distance travelled.
Draw it Out, Act it Out
I start with “What does this mean?” and if that gets blank stares “What do the letters mean?” Draw it out, act it out with playmobile characters, or use smarties if it helps (in this example, you would put three smarties down for every hour and count how many you have in total - to eat). Talking about the math together, and allowing your child to teach you (even if you have to fake not knowing the answer for a bit), will help to improve communication, increase patience, and give strategies for when the math gets tough.
Joanne shares her years of teaching experience, expertise and well-informed opinions. She juggles her role as a math teacher with her other life as mom of twin boys. She lives in Oakville, Ontario.
