Teaching integers... feedback?

I won’t be able to use the lesson this year, but hope to next year. Songs like a great lesson! Thank you. Val

It sounds excellent- I have a math teacher friend that I would like to run this by-he might even be able to field test it in the next few months as he teaches some summer school- would that be okay? The only thing that I did not see was the mantra for multiplication- positive times a positive equals a positive. I have to tell you that this was the piece that triggered my memory most effectively because it was so verbal and I am such a math clutz. But then again there was not a lot of multisensory teaching around in my youth…

Robin

A while back I posted a lot of stuff about signed numbers, including a practical and concrete guide to the whole multiplication issue. You can use the search button on this site to find it.

You are very welcome to use this material; if anyone adds it or adapts it to a website I would appreciate recognition of copyright, thanks.

I knew I’d seen the “going back in time” with deposits and withdrawals somewhere else, too (same idea as Dr. Chinn’s “car would be worth how much more two years ago” with negative time and depreciation) but couldn’t remember where ;)

It would be great. Keep me posted :)

Hi Sue,

Funny seeing me here, huh? I am teaching a student this summer for math and I may be using these exercises. Will let you know after I do. I am looking for good remedial math programs. He is still a mystery to me. I gave him a basic math informal test and he didn’t understand what I meant when I asked him how many pennies were in a dollar? He is 15 and he has been diagnosed with visual perceptual organization and visual sequential reasoning, abstract reasoning and visual motor integration. He doesn’t like to take risks and is one of those quiet ones that I always worry about. Help please from anyone that is reading this post. What programs can I use? I am doing On Cloud Nine this summer, just in case his visualizing isn’t up to par.

Hey, at least you’re not to terrified of math yourself to try to help the kid :)

It’s incredible what kids can not know despite having participated in math classes for years and years and years. YOu might want to pick up Landmark school’s math program (go to landmarkschool.org and click on the “outreach and publications”). There’s precious little out th ere! My latest issue of the LDA assoc. journal (_Learning Disabilities_) did a nice article on teaching subtraction for understanding instead of as a recipe (starting with emphasizing the “difference” concept, which I could really relate to having had more than one college student who really thought subtraction meant “take away” and didn’t know *what* to do to figure out the difference between, say, computer sales in two different years).
I hate having to figure out whether to try to get kids like this to look enough like they know something to pass whatever course they need to pass, or whether to try to *teach* them something. Unlike words, math is a language most of them have successfully avoided en toto, not just in print, so they sometimes have almost no experience with “thinking in math.”
You might also want to peek at Peggy Kaye’s “Math games” just for ideas for presenting concepts in a non-scary way.

You know how in reading you saw literally tons of books that kind of wandered around the topic and made it more and more complex and difficult, and then you ran into Reading Reflex and here was a book that actually *teaches* the subject in an organized way?
Well, look for the same in math.
If you read through ten pages of a text and can’t see what the focus is or where it’s going or why the material is presented, well, the student won’t either. If you start trying to teach some material and find it depends on all sorts of assumptions about what the student already knows, most of them unreasonable, then it’s badly designed. If you look at some material and it’s all tests and no teaching, run the other way. You may rest assured that 95% or more of the stuff on the market is really terrible, you are not being excessively picky! (Look at USA results in math — teaching and materials are just not effective in general).
I collect my old pre-1955 “Arithmetic We Need” series and old algebra books the size of paperbacks (as compared to modern books the size of city Yellow Pages with less math in them). Try your used book stores and Amazon.
Then, just as in reading, start at the beginning, where the student has real mastery — and that may be Grade 1 review. Work forward and you’ll make real progress.