Grimwade Educations

  Strength in Numbers  Dividing a class into two teams and having them play game of soccer is giving the one with the ball practice with soccer and the rest practice with running.  Often in an elementary math class the teacher gives one question for the entire class to answer. The question is usually somewhere in the middle of the students' abilities, too hard for some and too easy for others. Even though most of the hands go up, the teacher only picks one student to answer. It is difficult sometimes to have focus on more than one student.  Imagine watching a substitute teacher doing soccer with a class of grade 5 students. Mr. Blackstone divides a class into two teams and has them play a game of soccer. He is not a physical education specialist and this is the best way he knows to teach soccer. As you watch, you notice that any given time one player is practicing soccer with a ball and the rest are practicing running.One way to look at the idea of 'one at a time' i...

There was a time when I thought the children in my class were the only ones that didn't like math. After I found ways to really improve their skills and develop a love for math, I started visiting other schools and other classes. I thought, there has to be more children out there in the same situation. As I traveled from classroom to classroom, I found that children were the same everywhere. Though there were some differences, essentially the numbers were the same. About one in three students could do math. The rest either struggled with math or couldn't do it at all. As for who liked math, typically only the students who could do math liked it. Children spend over 2000 hours in math class in their elementary lives. Lets assume that two thirds of the children in the class don't like math. We'll examine the reasons why they don't like it later on, but for now let's just assume that most kids are sitting through math class like most adults sit through...