Keep It Simple Students

Hello mathletes,

The biggest thing I took away from last class was that you don't need to complicate things any more than they are already perceived to be with math. In particular, I'm thinking about the discussion we had about using common denominators when dividing fractions and the story we were told about a previous student who ended up in tears because they were, at one point in their own school days, taught that they were wrong for wanting to use common denominators and that the way to divide fractions was to cross multiply and then reduce.  That student later found out (years later) that either way, the answer is still the same and more importantly, they weren't wrong.

KISS: Keep It Simple Students...not these guys
Shannon, Adam. (2011, July 4). Kiss. 

The unfortunate outcome for that particular student is what I'll call a #teacherfail in that it resulted in the teacher closing off a pathway for the student rather than encouraging the exploration of it. One of the things that has been freeing about this class is the discovery of and encouragement to explore  many pathways to arrive at a particular destination. Certain math truths still exist  (2+2 is still 4 as far as I know) but how we arrive at those truths is up to us. If it makes more sense to you to add 1 + 1+ 1 + 1, go nuts.  If you're more comfortable doing 2 x 1 ÷ 2 + 3, have at it.

           Math truth: 2+2=4:

Keeping it simple doesn't have to mean finding an answer in the least number of or most basic steps. It can also mean doing what you're most comfortable with or what makes the most sense to you. If you're okay with flipping numbers and multiplying as the main operation to find the answer to a division question, power to you. I think we and our future students will gravitate to what is simplest for them to do in order to answer a math question or problem, but it's up to us as teachers to give them the opportunity to figure out what that is for them by providing them with multiple pathways while encouraging and supporting their exploration of them. 

If old school math used 'drill and kill' as a teaching method, consider referring to the new way of math as 'seek and destroy' - seek out negative math preconceptions/experiences and destroy them by encouraging the discovery and exploration of multiple pathways, and teaching math in a way that is doable, sensible, useful. In other words, keep it simple students...and it's okay to make it fun too.

                Seek and Destroy...negative math preconceptions and experiences