Good news for teachers, parents, and students… Lots of kids who hate math might get some vindication by a new study that suggests that forcing kids to sit down and do boring math problems might not be as helpful as showing them how math can be relevant to their lives. (Or, in the words of students all over, “make it fun.”) However, these kids also worked hard to improve their learning strategies.
The study finds that children who had higher levels of motivation and who used effective cognitive strategies improved their math achievement scores over five years, starting in fifth grade. Interestingly, they had higher levels of improvement than kids who started off the study with better IQ scores.
As a teacher, I always felt that math was one of those things in which repetitive practice, especially in the earlier grades, paid off. I remember drilling myself in third grade for hours on multiplication facts. When I taught middle school, I was always astounded that there were kids in middle school who hadn’t memorized their times tables. I wondered why someone wasn’t forcing them to sit down right now and memorize and practice.
I think what this study is saying is that it’s not enough just to force kids to sit down and learn facts. The most learning comes from when kids are taught strategies of how to learn and how these things matter in their own lives.