Video Game Thinking - Perseverence

Here ye, here ye: There are good things coming out of video games. Kids brains are quickly becoming wired to a new way of thinking, and it goes hand it hand with a time honored math strategy we call "guess and check."

Picture your beautiful blond-haired, blue-eyed 9 year old battling against an evil monster. Time after time her weapons are not strong enough and the character disappears from the screen. But magically, the character returns with one life gone, but ready to battle the same evil monster again and with new ideas for attack. In the end, your kind-hearted wonder either stops playing, completely looses all their lives or finds a way to defeat the evil villain.

Some math problems can be solved the same way, and we need to teach kids to harness their video game mentality and attack them like an evil villain. The guess and check math strategy requires a child to try out one possibility, check to see if it works, revise their attempt, check to see if it changes the outcome, and then continue to revise and check until the "answer" is achieved.

The hard part of the "guess and check" strategy is to keep kids persevering even when their guessing is wrong. We do not want kids to loose all their math lives or stop playing the math game. Video games have programmed kids to be okay with trying over and over again until they win, and now we need to re-program our students to keep going as well. Re-programming is key because students over the past 30 years have been taught that all math problems can be solved in "2 easy steps."

The classic guess and check question is:

Grandpa's farm has chickens and pigs. When Jenny went out to feed the animals she saw 80 feet but only 32 animals. How many animals were chickens and how many animals were pigs?

Here are some other "guess and check" questioning techniques:

- There are 24 kids in 3 grade with twice as many boys than girls. How many students are boys and how many are girls?

- How many different combinations of coins can you use to get 25 cents; fifty cents?

- List out a series of 6 numbers. Which two numbers can add up to 625? Which three numbers can add up to 625? Four numbers?

- Give all kids a geoboard and a set of specific descriptions of a shape (make a shape with 3 sets of parallel lines; make a 4-sided shape with one set of parallel lines). Students must continue to move the rubber band around until they have achieved a shape within the parameters. Walk around and continue to encourage students to check all descriptions before saying they are done.

- What is the longest perimeter of polygon that has an area of 25 square inches. In this activity, have students use grid paper or manipulate square tiles to determine their final answer.

- My favorite guess and check problem is Marilyn Burns Banquet Table question (link provided here). She also has a book Spaghetti and Meatballs for All to read aloud before completing the problem. http://mathsolutions.com/documents/0-590-94459-2_L.pdf

"Guess and check" has to be modeled by the teacher over and over until the teacher defeats the "being okay with my first idea" evil villain.

Fluency

The new standards have come out with fluency guidelines for grades K-5. The following are the new requirements for each grade level:

Kindergarten: Add and subtract within 5
1st Grade: Add and subtract within 10
2nd Grade: Add and subtract within 20 using mental strategies. *By the end, 2nd grade students must know all the sums of two one-digit numbers from memory.
3rd Grade: Multiply and divide within 100 from memory
4th Grade: Add and subtract multi-digit whole numbers
5th Grade: Multiply multi-digit whole numbers

I have noticed my students are doing fabulous mastering their addition facts. However, subtraction seems to always lag behind. Why? No one likes to subtract - everyone wants to add. The only time I find it exciting to subtract is when I am on a diet or determining the difference in the score of a sporting event. Most often, I use subtraction when balancing my bank account or getting change, both of which means I am spending money.

I took it upon myself to find subtraction activities and websites that go beyond simple flash cards and memorization.  My rules for fluency activities are the following:
1. The activity must require students to use strategies beyond memorization to solve the problem.
2. There must be a picture associated with the problem for K-1 or struggling mathematicians.
3. Students must be able to see how the facts are connected together. For example, 4+5=9 which means 9-5=4.

This is a great website for a lot of subtraction games. I really enjoyed the different levels of: 

Speed Grid Subtraction

There are a lot of activities on this page. However, I find that Math Mahjong best fits my rules for fluency activities:

Sheppard Software

Addition and subtraction work together to create a very thought provoking game. 

Circle 21