Making Math Enjoyable for All
By Brittany Puffenberger, Math Instructional Coach
When you think back to your math experiences as a student, what emotions or feelings come to mind? Anxiety, fear, frustration? If you’re like the average American adult, you’re likely to report ‘some’ or ‘moderate’ levels of math anxiety that persist from your school experiences. Think about what made you feel this way. Were you ashamed or even punished for making mistakes in front of the class? Was it so challenging that you felt defeated?
Of course, as teachers, we don’t want our students leaving our classroom with these feelings. Our job is not only to teach our content but also to instill a love of learning and positivity in our students. This also directly correlates to their math performance. Researchers from Stanford University School of Medicine found that “having a positive attitude about math was connected to better function of the hippocampus, an important memory center in the brain, during performance of arithmetic problem.”
So, the question remains: How do we make math joyful for our students?
Let’s go straight to the source. I recently made the switch to an instructional coach in my school. On my last day of teaching, I gave my students a reflection prompt to answer two questions: “Has your opinion of math changed since starting school this year?” and “Do you find math joyful? If so, what kind of things make you view math in a positive way?”
Here are some responses I received:
“Yes, my opinion has changed because you have shown me that you’re not always going to be right, and that’s ok.”
“I like math because it’s fun and it’s ok to not know a question.”
“The challenges”
“I have always loved math because it challenges me to use my mind, and I like hard challenges.”
“Last year I didn’t like math but this year I grew a new love for math. I think it’s fun to challenge myself in math.”
Two common themes are present here: challenges and making mistakes. It’s these that help students develop positive math identities and beliefs.
Interestingly enough, the very things that may have caused you math anxiety — struggle and mistake-making — can be the answer to what makes learning joyful for students.
Sounds counterintuitive, right? There is some nuance here. Two things need to be happening in math class to make the shift.
- A growth mindset culture must be established from day one and continuously reinforced throughout the school year.
- Math tasks need to be accessible to all learners.
Research has been conducted to demonstrate the benefits of a growth mindset in the classroom. Dr. Jo Boaler is a Stanford University professor and researcher of mathematics education that supports this theory. In her latest book, Math-ish, she provides a wealth of information to support a growth mindset culture in your class and offers free resources to use on her page linked here. As teachers, we need to convey these ideas to our students daily — starting from day one. There are a few imperatives for this to be successful.
- Work together to create classroom norms that support a safe space free to make mistakes.
- Communicate brain science with your learners; let them know what is scientifically happening to their brains when they are engaging in a productive struggle.
- Let them be wrong. Don’t highlight common mistakes before letting them make them.
- Prove that you don’t only value correct answers. Showcase these mistakes with the class and celebrate them as learning opportunities. See the value in what they do understand to help scaffold into new understanding.
- Model metacognitive thinking of your own. Do this with self-reflective prompts like “At first I thought….but now I think… because….”
This message also needs to come through in how we assess students. I was struck by an idea from the book Building Thinking Classrooms by Peter Liljedhal: the concept of ‘evaluating what you value.’ If we’re telling students in class that mistakes are a part of learning but simultaneously punishing them by taking off points for mistakes on assessments, we’re sending mixed messages. If your district supports this, allow opportunities for students to learn from these errors and make corrections.
It’s about balance. The appropriate amount of challenge is necessary to make math a joyful experience. Too easy and it’s boring; too hard and it’s defeating.
It’s the perfect ‘Goldilocks’ tasks where the real fun is had. I recently attended a professional development webinar presented by Dr. Raj Shah where he compared this to games. He explained how it’s the obstacles that make the game entertaining. Take the game of golf; it’s water hazards and bunkers that make it fun. Or a video game: level one has to feel challenging yet attainable enough to beat in order for people to keep playing. Similarly, a math task needs to be rigorous but also accessible enough for learners to persevere in solving, otherwise known as ‘low-floor, high-ceiling’ tasks.
Take this case from NCTM. Students can often be intimidated by word problems. So, one may initially think that having students solve a basic problem where they must find the value of the unknown in a proportion such as :
would be “easier” for them to access. In contrast, when presented with a story problem like finding a proportional relationship between two different types of candy in a jar, information is presented in a conceptual way that students are familiar with and can visualize. It’s less intimidating and allows multiple means of representing thought processes. These kinds of tasks have multiple entry points, encourage exploration, and build procedural fluency from conceptual understanding.
It’s when a growth mindset is consistently modeled for students by the teacher through the classroom culture he or she creates that students learn to see the value in productive struggle and making mistakes.
We owe it to these students to increase accessibility and foster a growth mindset so that when they reach adulthood, they look back on their experiences with math and report feelings of joy.
Brittany Puffenberger has over a decade of teaching experience in grades K-6 in both brick-and-mortar and cyber classrooms. She currently serves as a math instructional coach at a cyber charter school in Pennsylvania. Brittany has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Elementary Education from Slippery Rock University and a Master of Education Degree in Education Policy, Organization, & Leadership from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her greatest interest in the field is studying more effective, inclusive, and innovative instructional practices to provide equitable outcomes for all learners.
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