Education Week - May 8, 2019 - 19

s a mathematics educator who also happens to be a new mom, I have serious concerns about the future math classroom
my daughter will enter. One of my biggest fears is that the math class will stifle
much of her curiosity and creativity that I
have witnessed every day during her first
few months of life.
In my collaborations with preschool to 2nd grade earlychildhood educators over the past five years, I have found
that teachers often wrestle with two historically competing
philosophies of educating young children. One philosophy embraces the importance of creating play-based environments,
where children learn by exploring and engaging in play. The
other emphasizes the need to prepare students to meet state
and national mathematics standards by focusing on specific
academic skills. These two philosophies are not either-or. In
fact, mathematical thinking and learning often happen during play.
With the adoption of the Common Core State Standards
and an increasing focus on so-called 21st-century skills, our
thinking about supporting students' curiosity and creativity has progressed in recent years. However, as with most
change, the implementation of our ideas hasn't yet panned
out the way we might have hoped.
I am finding that teachers are increasingly feeling the pressure
to address learning standards in ways that do not build upon
young children's inherent curiosity and inclination to experiment.
Math instruction in the early grades is too often becoming more
like traditional high school math classes. I have seen kindergarten
and 1st grade teachers giving short lectures followed by having
children complete worksheets filled with math problems. These
worksheets often consist of the same type of problem just with
different numbers (e.g., 1+2 = __; 1+3 = __; 1+4 = __) and noninteractive images for young children to count or compare.
What I am witnessing is not surprising given our misconceptions of what it means to learn math in school. Many think that
math is all about learning procedures and memorizing rules. At
both the high school and elementary levels, procedurally focused
learning is not conducive to supporting students' understanding
of important mathematical concepts. In fact, a 2016 study published in Scientific American found that students who rely on
memorization are half a year behind their peers who approach
math by relating concepts to existing knowledge and monitoring
their own understanding.
It is important to attend to mathematical learning goals while

fostering creativity early in a child's education. We need to create
more opportunities for young children to explore mathematical
ideas in interactive and playful ways. Instead of doing math worksheets, young children need intentionally designed activities that
allow them to think and engage like mathematicians by testing
out different ideas, experimenting with strategies, and explaining
their thinking. Unlike traditional math worksheet problems that
can only be solved one way, children should engage in problems
that have many possible solution strategies and are ripe for discussion and debate.
What can we do as educational practitioners and leaders?
1. Be curious about how children think. Young children
have fascinating strategies for how to solve mathematical problems. Our goal is to support them to develop perseverance, confidence, and critical thinking skills when solving math problems.
Rather than telling them exact steps for solving a problem, a
good first step is to ask open-ended questions ("How did you
figure it out?"). Then watch to see what the child does before
asking another question that is based on what you observed ("I
noticed that you moved the blue bears. Why did you do that?").
2. Support teachers to change things up. Teachers should
be encouraged to focus on the creative nature of math. It's OK if
math assignments don't look like traditional math worksheets.
If teachers give homework, it should be interactive and exploratory in nature, not stagnant worksheets.
3. Get parents on board by encouraging them to find
opportunities to engage in math in our everyday lives
and surroundings. A great way to start is by counting collections of objects with young children. A collection can be made up
of anything found at home, such as coins or utensils. The goal
is to figure out how many objects are in the collection and to
support children to think deeply about quantity in a way that
makes sense to them. In my experiences, children are very excited to figure out how many objects are in their collections and
will use a variety of strategies in the process (e.g., sorting, multiplying, adding, etc.).
If we make a concerted effort to push back against traditional
math worksheets, my concerns might be alleviated by the time
my daughter enters kindergarten. n
KATHY LIU SUN is currently an assistant professor of education at Santa
Clara University, where her research examines the barriers that prevent
students from succeeding and advancing in mathematics and STEM-related
fields. She previously taught high school math in San Jose, Calif.

We need to
create more
opportunities for
young children
to explore
mathematical
ideas in
interactive and
playful ways."

Getty

How to Solve
Our Math
Worksheet
Problem

By Kathy Liu Sun

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