Math Without Breakdowns: A Spoonful of Sugar Makes the Algebra Go Down

The fear of manipulating or even looking at numbers and symbols is so prevalent that researchers have a name for it – math anxiety. By Richardson and Suinn’s (1972) definition, math anxiety equals “feelings of tension and anxiety that interfere with the manipulation of mathematical problems in a wide variety of ordinary life and academic situations.” In many countries and cultures, this translates to poor scores on standardized tests, incoherent logical thinking, and an all-around freakout in the face of the quadratic equation.

One way to overcome extreme phobias is to confront them head-on. Compulsive disorder patients may find themselves touching trash or tossing out keepsakes, by doctor’s orders, if they are handwashing or hoarding personalities. As a teacher, however, it’s often conducive to ease kids into an intimidating lesson. And there’s no better method of stopping the cold sweats than with a familiar, comforting snack.

No matter how basic your classroom setup or how limited your space, you can most likely find a food that will engage students. Check out the following ideas to get started.

Any large, regularly shaped edible can be used to demonstrate fractions. The famous Memory Palace, a mnemoic device from Ancient Rome, takes a pre-learned set of striking images and uses it to anchor unfamiliar ones in the practitioner’s mind. Foods substitute for the striking images in this exercise, which is best used as a first lesson in fractions.

Assemble a group of three to ten fruit and/or bread objects, depending on how many basic fractions you want to introduce. For example, to teach halves, thirds, and fourths, you would need three edible objects. In front of your students, cut each one into a different number of sections. Have them repeat after you as you count the sections being cut. (A large round tortilla cut into five pieces will have everyone repeating “One-fifth, two-fifths, three-fifths…,” and so forth.) You may want to take slices away or move them together as you count. After doing this for all the fraction sizes, students can be directed to write the fractions and draw the associated foods on a piece of paper. In the future, they will make a mental jump to starfruit or tortillas – not revulsion – when they come across fractional numbers.

Uniform, countable objects are best for showing kids how to perform elementary arithmetic operations. This idea has been done and done over, but it’s still a good one.

Each student starts out with his or her own stockpile of beans. The beans (or grains) should all be indistinguishable. To help students add seven and 19, pair them up and have one person contribute seven beans and the other 19 beans to a communal “pot” in between them. This can be a piece of cloth, an actual pot, or just an imaginary circle on their desk. Then, they count the beans together. It gets fun when you start adding and subtracting a complex sequence of numbers – if you want to have the class add 8+15-9-2+7+4+…+1+2-30-14, line up all the kids and have some act as contributors (plus) and some as takers (minus).Bring to class a bag of differently colored candies and you’re all set to introduce probability. Begin by doling out spoonfuls of the candy to each student, making sure everyone has a good amount of every color.

Tell each student to take three of type A, ten of type B, and five of type C candies out of the bunch you’ve given them, and to hold and shake these candies in their cupped hands. Their neighbor will be selecting one blindly, and vice versa. Now you can ask, “What is the probability that the candy you select will be Type A? What is the probability that it is Type B or Type C? What about Type B and Type C?” The last question is a trick, and gets them thinking about empty intersections years before they will encounter set theory. They should realize that a candy cannot be blue and red.

If you want to go even further with color and size groups, you can solve easy algebraic equations. The key is to allow students to manipulate physical objects with their hands as they shuffle abstract quantities with their minds.

Pass out worksheets containing a large-font one-variable equation, say 5x+6=16. This equation contains two units, 1’s and x’s. Assign each unit a snack variety – for instance, 1’s could be peanuts, and x’s sesame wands. Note what each food represents. Now “write” the equation out using your food. Place five sesame wands under “5x,” six peanuts under “6,” and sixteen peanuts under “16.” As you would normally write “-6″ under both sides to reverse the addition operation, take away six peanuts from both sides. You are left with ten peanuts on the right and five sesame wands on the left. Now pair them off: you find out that each sesame wand corresponds to two peanuts. Equation solved! The answer is x=2.

Everyone gets to eat the scraps at the end of the lesson, of course.

Keep in mind that even if there isn’t a direct link between your math lesson and the vegetable kingdom, bringing the kitchen to the classroom has several benefits. For one thing, research shows a concept sticks better when more senses are engaged in learning it. Food lets kids explore math through their tactile, olfactory, and gustatory senses. Most of all, it diminishes their fear of mathematical thinking. Cute, crunchy seaweed biscuits make a good antidote to the fear factor in algebra.

 

Written by Tiffany Tsai