What if math teachers are really pirates...
- Sparrow Home School
- Nov 8, 2017
- 5 min read
Maths. You usually either love it or hate it. It wasn't my fave subject at school. I remember late high school, you could choose most of your subjects. You had to have maths and a level of English but just about everything else was up for choice. I loved art at school and so chose lots of those modules. I did clay and sculpture, drawing and painting, whatever was going. Due to scheduling, this meant unless I dropped one of those classes, I was going to end up in a maths class at a level that was too high for me at the time. I would not budge and so, in the harder maths class I went.
Needless to say it was a bit of a struggle and I often questioned my teacher when and where would I use some of the concepts taught. One particular concept (I can't remember what it was), I just could not get. I remember asking my teacher when would I use such a concept and he admitted that the likelihood was that none of us would use it, maybe a very small percentage if we were to become engineers, maybe. I asked him why are we bothering then. He replied to help with logic skills and because that's what they were told to teach us. I said a few of us were struggling for something we'd never use and we could learn logic skills in other ways. I remember being so frustrated.
Maths is not my strongest subject and I'm OK with that. We are not all great at everything. Both my boys happen to be quite good at maths and I've found over the years of home schooling them, my maths has improved as a result.
The thing with home schooling a subject that is not your strong point, you still have lots of ways of getting help in this area. You can get tutors, ask a friend, You Tube, math dictionaries and more. When I first starting home schooling my sons, they were younger and I could handle helping them at that level if and when they needed it. As they got older, they were getting bored with just doing workbook style maths (about the only time we've ever used workbooks). I could help them with this, if they struggled with something, we'd talk and You Tube and ponder and have a go and would eventually get to where we needed to be. Sometimes just by asking my sons a few questions, that would kick off a thought process for them and they'd work out what they needed to. I ended up having them be with a Montessori experienced teacher/tutor once a week. This was not only to give them further assistance from someone who was great at maths, it also mixed things up and made maths interesting again for them. I also searched for and found a range of maths puzzles, games and more (both online and physical manipulatives) to help underpin the concepts they were learning.
After a while, we had to stop using the tutor. Though my preference would have been for us to pick a specific math system and just follow through the years, my boys like something new each year, to help keep it a bit more interesting. So every year, the boys and I discuss maths and how they are finding the current program and what they feel is missing for them and what sorts of avenues do they feel will work for them. They have used various workbooks and online programs.
However, the boys are getting older now and have really started to question maths and their need to learn maths that will be relevent to their lives, both now and in the future. As a result, we will be moving away from the online program they've been using for the last 12 months, back to workbooks filling the need they have expressed.
My teenager will be using 4 of the Mathematics for Living books (one for each term). The first title is 'Mathematics Around the Home'. The types of things it covers in there are: running a car, buying appliances, building costs, tiling, swimming pools, concreting, carpeting and more. The next title is 'Travel Mathematics'. The types of things it covers in there are: travelling expenses, world time, time differences, weather, travel insurance, exchange rates and more. The third title is 'Outdoor Mathematics' covering things such as: perimeters and areas, working in different types of grounds, direction, taking short-cuts, traffic, speed, size, angles, radiations and more. The final title is 'Recreational Mathematics' covering things such as: patterns and puzzles, coding, computerhythms, networks, computing, rates and ratios, surveying and more. On top of the above, we'll also work out how to buy a car and the things that usually go along with that like loans, interest and those sorts of things. We'll work on money and how to manage it, maths in the kitchen, maths at the shops and so much more. Lots of real life stuff.
Some of the above concepts have been learnt to varying degrees and in different ways already, however using these books, they will be presented in a way that he can relate to or will be able to relate to in every day life, in ways he will be able to actually use. He wants to know how to work out how to tile a floor for example. He will learn the maths required to do so.
My youngest will still be learning maths largely in a typical sequence and way most kids in Australia learn at his age. We are still laying down certain concepts and learning about them from different angles. I will continue to underpin his learning with that range of online games, puzzles and physical manipulatives.
Don't forget, maths is also covered off by default in ways you might not even notice. For example, the kids cook, working out measurements in recipes, working out a shopping budget and so forth. Stuff you need to know. They often use maths in science as well. My eldest is learning wood-working and maths is of course used there. My youngest loves Lego and often he gets out rulers and so forth to work out a project he is starting. Maths happens everywhere, all the time, often without you even knowing.
We are all using computers for just about everything these days. Programs are designed to make our lives so easy and do all the working out for us. We carry phones with fancy calculators already built in. Maths as it's always been traditionally taught will become more and more obsolete. Do I think that we should start to abandon all types of maths? Well no, I don't. I say that even though I'm not a big fan of learning about maths, I still think we need to retain knowledge on how to work at least the basics out.
Do we need to clog up our days home schooling or not, with math concepts that are potentially not even useable? I would suggest not. And remember, when you decide what your career path is going to be and you find there is a concept you need to know that you may not have touched on or not touched on enough, well you then just learn what you need to know, so you never have to miss out - you can learn what you want, when you want. There is no limit to your learning.
Get on the internet and search for some real world math ideas to help build up skills that really will be useable in your world.
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