Supporting Communication Through Understanding A Child's Process

Earlier I wrote about the importance of supporting the development of mathematical communication in a child.  I thought break my thoughts up into chunks.  Today, I'd like to talk about listening to understand a visual thinker.

One of the difficulties in communicating with a visual-spatial person, especially a child, about how a solution is reached is that they often understand things in pictures.  For one thing, there isn't really a sequence of steps they took to arrive at "an answer."  Rather, everything is there all at once in the picture.  For another, since we converse using language, ask children to explain themselves using language, and often model using language to explain, children expect to explain themselves using language.  As children get on in Math, this might evolve into a habit of trying to explain steps in a process using numbers or equations.  We need to break out of these two boxes. 

Supporting a Global Learning Style

A few months ago, I wrote about exploring the "right-brained" style and sequence of learning, the details of which are written about extensively at "The Right Side of Normal" website.  In my previous post, I speculated that perhaps we are a family of "right-brained learners."  We are not.  (My son and I are "whole-brained" when it comes to math.  This plausibility of this claim is supported by a recent article citing studies that investigate brain activity of youth with a predilection for math and/or music.)  However, I do have one child who learns math in a way that constantly surprises me.  She does, indeed, follow the "right-brained" way of doing things. 

Many Paths to an Endpoint

When I was in university, I had a professor for a geometry course that all math teachers were required to take.  I found it interesting at the time that he was a professor that students seems to really like or really dislike, in terms of teaching style.  At the time, I chalked it up to his habit of bringing in ideas and skills from related courses, and the lack of good mathematical understanding by some students, which, I thought, should allow them to integrate the different areas of mathematics.