- #1
bballwaterboy
- 85
- 3
Does this 81-year-old hold the key to teaching kids how to understand math? (Jan. 24)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...4f6116-c12e-11e5-9443-7074c3645405_story.html
But week after week, Johnson still drives from her Clinton home to the after-school program at the Washington Tennis and Education Foundation campus in Southeast and, according to officials at the program, consistently lifts underperforming math students to grade level and beyond. This month, she received a copyright for a diagnostic test that she says can assess specific gaps in students’ math knowledge in minutes.
She’s now working with the foundation to raise money to digitize the test, which includes eight to 10 math problems for each grade level, so that it can be used in schools throughout the country.
“I believe all students can learn math if they understand the laws,” Johnson said. “If a student masters a problem on my test, I don’t care what test they take, they master it.”
From this week's Washington Post. Any thoughts on this anyone?
Sounds kind of cool, actually. This part does seem very important:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...4f6116-c12e-11e5-9443-7074c3645405_story.html
But week after week, Johnson still drives from her Clinton home to the after-school program at the Washington Tennis and Education Foundation campus in Southeast and, according to officials at the program, consistently lifts underperforming math students to grade level and beyond. This month, she received a copyright for a diagnostic test that she says can assess specific gaps in students’ math knowledge in minutes.
She’s now working with the foundation to raise money to digitize the test, which includes eight to 10 math problems for each grade level, so that it can be used in schools throughout the country.
“I believe all students can learn math if they understand the laws,” Johnson said. “If a student masters a problem on my test, I don’t care what test they take, they master it.”
From this week's Washington Post. Any thoughts on this anyone?
Sounds kind of cool, actually. This part does seem very important:
Johnson’s methods rely on drilling in the basic concepts of math — or, as she puts it, “the laws of math” — and ensuring that students understand why each step of solving a problem is necessary.
If a student doesn’t conceptually understand that they can’t add apples and oranges together, for example, how will they know what to do a few years later when they see different variables in an addition equation in algebra class.