Though not her primary strength, SpiderGirl has been drawn to math from "day one." I remember vividly trying to change her diaper as she squirmed on the change table when she was just a few weeks old. Daddy started counting to her, holding up his fingers as he did: "1, 2, 3, 4, 5..." That got her attention and she stopped fussing to avidly watch. But she'd be behind in school right now, or at least hate math work. She won't do practice addition or subtraction on paper. She's not interested in being taught.
Since SpiderGirl manipulates numbers in her head well and is fairly proficient at geometry, and can communicate her mental processes, I know she can perform basic arithmetic. Yet, I am constantly surprised by how much her arithmetic fluency progresses with no apparent work. She doesn't do worksheets (which is fine) but she doesn't seem to do any incidental calculations either. Where is this practice coming from? Just her brain slowly digesting it? I used to notice a similar improvement in my music: I would leave my lesson, not touch the piano for a week, and have an improved ability to play at the next lesson. Of course, I improved more during the years I did practise, but why did I improve at all? And I'm not convinced that if I pressed SpiderGirl to practise her arithmetic, it would benefit her learning of math overall. It's bizarre. I would love to see more research into this type of learning.Since coming to terms with SpiderGirl's learning style, I have had some trouble finding ways to help her build upon her math knowledge. She's been asking for more, no longer satisfied with broad ideas, ready for details. We tried Life of Fred, which was successful for awhile, but even Life of Fred's story appeal could not overcome the dryness with which he presents the mid-level concepts and skills of multiple digit multiplication and division, fractions, and decimals. I had written off textbooks as being too dry and linear. A friend of mine lent me her copies of Beast Academy. When I flipped through it, I admired the art, but immediately thought that SpiderGirl would not enjoy the linear, lecture-style way of presenting the math topics. I showed it to her anyway. She enjoyed it very much!
How much SpiderGirl enjoyed Beast Academy was a surprise to me, but not as much of a surprise as how she enjoyed it. First, she flipped through just looking at the pictures here and there; then, she read through the story; then, she asked me to read some to her, beginning in the middle, and attempted a couple of random problems. Suddenly, a light went on in my brain: Big ideas to details; blurry picture to one with increased resolution; connections before depth. This is the global learner. This is how she has learned through the Maths Quest series as well: a concept here, a concept there; as long as she's learning, everything is coming into better focus.
I guess what I need to do in order to support her in Math is to keep feeding her new material. I need to keep appealing books on the shelves that contain new concepts, yes, but also books that contain enough problems that will challenge her to master the concepts and skills. The key to helping a global learner is variety. Just as I wouldn't expect her to learn to read by keeping a complete set of phonics books to study from, I shouldn't expect a complete set of lectures to encourage fluency in math skills. Solving problems that focus only on one concept at a time might give a student confidence, but a global learner especially needs context, and context in math is attained through story, real life situations, opportunities to play, and variety.
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