Comments on: Why Students Hate Word Problems

By: Christine Lenghaus

Christine Lenghaus — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 22:42:57 +0000

Yesterday at a conference in Australia a speaker commented on learning being visual – this is a big part of why what you share works.
I explain making meaning as follows: you need both sides of the brain to make meaning.

Left side of the brain Right side of brain
If I say.. you see a picture of:
black cat a black cat
pink hippopotamus a pink hippopotamus (as
ridiculous as it seems!)
love ? (see how difficult this is as it
has many meanings to each
person let alone trying to get
two people to have the same
meaning!
I say the word splunge which I know would have multiple spellings but what sort of picture do you have? A person doing the splits with a lunge, a long piece of sponge…

I think this is a big part of why the visuals work so well – it allows us to create a shared meaning and then learn mathematics.

By: Van

Van — Tue, 18 Nov 2014 16:13:46 +0000

We have been trying to incorporate more of the 3 act problems with our students. What is nice is the incorporation of multimedia for students to see how math correlates to life. But the biggest struggle that we are still having with our students when they start to work out the problem is the UNDERSTANDING. We have students that struggle too often with reading and then have issues trying to decide what they are truly suppose to be answering. To help them out I go through how to dissect a word problem with them first, you can see my poster at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/How-to-dissect-a-math-word-problem-1565684.
What I really feel is the underlying issue for math word problems is one the application which the 3 act questions help solve but two do the students know what they are reading in order to solve.

By: mike

mike — Sat, 25 Oct 2014 15:03:32 +0000

@Dan Thomander

To be fair, not all my students beg for text book questions, but those seeking refinement certainly do. I spend weeks at a time not touching a text book in all my classes, including those who would shy at begging for more practice questions.

The more my lessons are not my lessons at all, but rather my students’ lessons, the better they are. I try to get out of the way of their learning as much as possible. They’re not the medium, they’re the artists, to paraphrase your analogy.

But speaking to my criticism of the other Dan’s commentary, early in the video he goes out of his way to say that he’s not picking and choosing text questions as Straw Man exemplars of poor practice and yet proceeds to do exactly that.
Has *any* teacher ever thought that blindly pulling out a random question from a text as a lesson plan was likely to result in a quality lesson? I think not. But they serve a definite purpose for skill refinement and the text questions Dan selects as particularly poor actually serve that purpose as well as any.

The 3-act lesson is a nice way of thinking about lessons, but not really new. What makes it effective is the passion, energy, and approach to the structure itself.

By: OTR Links 10/25/2014 | doug — off the record

OTR Links 10/25/2014 | doug — off the record — Sat, 25 Oct 2014 05:30:59 +0000

[…] dy/dan Â» Blog Archive Â» Why Students Hate Word Problems […]

By: Geonz

Geonz — Fri, 24 Oct 2014 20:05:56 +0000

(and meant to say that I got the video going in the meantime — we don’t exactly manage “three acts” but do achieve many of the same ends. And one of the guys in the first pilot section of it did, honestly, really want more word problems. )

By: Geonz

Geonz — Fri, 24 Oct 2014 20:03:29 +0000

Movie’s stalling out on me… but I was just noticing earlier today that one of the strengths of our completely re-worked “Math Literacy” course is that we do, now, start with a “word problem” and then generate the math from the real situation, instead of teaching a math procedure and then artificially twisting some “real” situations. It works a lot better…

By: Dan Thomander

Dan Thomander — Fri, 24 Oct 2014 13:39:42 +0000

Mr. Meyer,
I must say that you have inspired many math teachers and I am one of them. I love the concept of 3-act math and only wish we had some more examples of you putting it to use in your classroom. I’ve tried it rather unsuccessfully in the past and am a bit stymied about why it hasn’t worked like I thought it would.
I would like to comment on the criticisms I read here and elsewhere about your approach. I think it is obvious that teaching is an art form where the medium (students) is inconsistently delivered to the artist (teacher). It makes no sense whatsoever to me why someone who teaches one type of student at one level would criticize the techniques used by another teacher who teaches a different type of student at another level. For example, in reaction to this blog post “mike” comments that his best and brightest students beg him for more practice. Perhaps that has more to do with the way he practices his art, but I suspect it has just as much to do with the medium he is dealing with.
As a teacher, I have never in my years of teaching, met a student who begged me for more word problems. If I had that problem, I certainly would fail to understand what you are getting at here. Since I don’t, I relate to you entirely.
Thanks for your contributions to the improvement of math education.

By: GS Chandy

GS Chandy — Fri, 24 Oct 2014 07:50:26 +0000

Mr Meyer:

I am NOT a math-teacher at any level, so I do not regularly follow your blog (though I am most keenly interested in enhancing the ‘effectiveness of math ‘learning+teaching’). I have developed a powerful ‘systems aid’ to problem solving and decision making, which I am promoting. This tool is called the ‘One Page Management System’ (OPMS). More information about the OPMS is available at the attachments to my post heading the thread “Democracy: how to achieve it?” – see http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=2419536.

I have seen a fair number of your blog-posts, kindly brought to attention to participants at the forum ‘math-teach @ drexel’ by Richard Strausz (who IS a math teacher and who is also a regular follower [and admirer] of your blog).

My comments on your blog: I think it is useful indeed – though it probably could be enhanced/improved quite significantly in many ways. This is based on my own judgement , as well as on the opinions of several of your followers, whose remarks and comments I have seen at your blog.

I do believe you might like to take note of and respond to the serial and continuing put-downs by one Robert Hansen at the above-noted Math Forum of what I believe you are trying to accomplish vis-a-vis the ‘learning and teaching of math’. Robert Hansen’s latest quite vicious remarks appear at a thread he has titled “Dy/Scam’s Latest” (dt. Oct 21, 2014 6:01 AM, http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=9625018).

I do believe you should take note of his attacks on you and your blog. (If you’re willing to do a [tiny] bit of learning, alongside a fair bit of ‘unlearning’, the OPMS process would help you develop the most effective possible response to Robert Hansen’s rather vicious and damaging lies).

Best wishes
GS Chandy

By: Paul Carson

Paul Carson — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 15:30:07 +0000

Another terrific talk. Yes word problems are artificial and contain many assumptions. Your method of eliciting everything – question, information req’d and technique req’d sets up a student to independently become maths problem solvers to any problem, not just school/exam based. It’s very empowering. School at the moment does the opposite and kids believe it’s about passing an exam. I had a new student yesterday who told me that she ‘didn’t want to learn anything new’. A sad indictment of current methods at school. Love your passion Dan.

By: Maria

Maria — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 15:19:52 +0000

@Dan and howardat58:

Thanks for your answers! I do use Geogebra when I work with parabolic throwing (I don’t use Dan’s video, but I film my students using catapults they’ve built themselves), but I do all this work AFTER explaining how parabolic movement works, and how to draw a parabola in Geogebra. Should I be more daring and let them discover the concept by themselves? Do you achieve that? maybe your students are older than mines…. (15)

If you get to do that I’ll try, for sure!