Living Maths

Have you seen this speech by Dan Meyer?  If not you must stop and take a look.  What he has to say about maths instruction is powerful and may change the way you teach maths forever!




Living maths is essential!  Memorising algorithms is not the solution.  Children need to be taught the deeper understanding behind their maths.  That is what i strive for with my own children.  We don't achieve it perfectly, but i feel we are well on our way.

You can see our Math Progression here.  I love that Miquon is discovery/inquiry based.  It doesn't spoon feed the children the algorithms.  That can sometimes lead to frustration but with a little encouragement i find it ultimately leads to them figuring out the solution all by themselves and truly knowing and understanding what they are doing and why.

By adding living maths books such as Life of Fred and Charlesbridge Math Adventures i'm trying to help them see maths in everyday situations.  I've also just obtained Kitchen Table Math (it literally just arrived in the box, can't wait to look at it!) and i'm hoping that will inspire us for Mini Math Monday.

I whole heartedly agree with Dan Meyer that problem solving is the heart of maths.  We incorporate plenty of word problems into our daily maths and will be doing more hands on problem solving moving forward, especially where we can incorporate it into a STEM project.

What do you think about what Dan Meyer has to say?

Amber