Comments on: Hold the marbles:

By: associative property | EDUC 628-Spring-08

associative property | EDUC 628-Spring-08 — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:35:29 +0000

[...] From Phaedrus and his refrence to this blog, where the following was stated: For example, they studied different approaches at teaching the basic mathematical property of commutativity — that you can switch up the order of elements and still get the same answer, as in 3 + 2 or 2 + 3 equals 5. [...]

By: Barbara Nantz

Barbara Nantz — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 00:29:44 +0000

I think that what they are trying to say here is that concrete basics are nessasary to understanding more abstract problems. For example: If you don’t know 2 +3 = 3 + 2 it makes it hard to go to a word problem that talks about walking 2 miles north and than 3 miles west, is that the same as walking 3 miles east and 2 miles south. Very simple examples, but hopefully you see what I mean. Some of the students get caught up in the symbols or operations of a problem when they don’t know them well.

By: Cathy Bechtel

Cathy Bechtel — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:54:33 +0000

I read this article and really just can’t disagree more. After teaching math for nine years and loving math myself, I can’t see how abstract symbols could be more meaningful to a child than using concrete, real-world examples.

By: Jady

Jady — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 02:23:51 +0000

Did I mention I am doing Math Intervention this year? They used college students in the study. I hope that I wouldn’t need marbles at that age to solve probability, but if I did I probably wouldn’t tell anyone. Research shows that most younger students need the concrete or the manipulative before learning how to do formula, or write number sentences.