I volunteer to give elementary school kids before-school help with their reading. Today, however, I helped a 4th grade girl with math.
Every time we went to do a problem–like 9x9, or 36+18, or 9x7, or 16x4, the girl would look up at the ceiling and try to do the problem in her head, instead of writing the problem down and working it out. That would be okay if she could do it better that way, but she couldn’t come up with the answers until she wrote the problem down on paper and did it the old-fashioned way. Then–she is a bright girl–it was clear to her what the answer was, and she’d get it in a snap.
I’d think she just had a mild case of ADD, but many of the other kids I’ve met there do this too. I don’t remember any kid doing this when I was in school–we were always staring at our papers, not at the ceiling!
Any theories as to what is up here? Bad study habits? Short attention spans? Just being lazy? I wouldn’t comment except that it seems to be a relatively widespread problem in this school.
I don’t have a cite for this, but I remember hearing about a study which showed that most people tend to look up when they are thinking real hard. Don’t know why, but I’ve noticed that I do it, too.
Fifth grade teacher here. I love math. But I think many students are very intimidated by it. A few years ago, we grouped our math students and I got to teach the “high” group. That was so fun! Now, we don’t group them…and, man, it’s painful. I try to remain patient as I teach the students who look at me blankly. I try not to be filled with dispair as I notice that the concepts I worked so hard to teach are gone a week later.
I think that like most other things in life, you have to put work into math to be good at it and enjoy it. Most kids don’t want to take time away from their TV watching and video game playing to memorize those times tables. And, sadly, being competant at math is mostly up to the individual child. I can’t open up their brains and pour the knowledge in.
It may be an attempt to minimize the distractions while she is trying to concentrate. Usually there isn’t much on the ceiling, but there is probably a lot going on in the rest of the room.
Kind of like turning down the radio in the car while driving slowly in a neighborhood, looking for a new address. No, turning off the radio doesn’t make my eyesight better, but it is 1 less distraction.
Or closing your eyes while trying to remember a phone number.
kind of on the same note, I remember when I was in karate I along with others would always look at the floor when going through our forms, weren’t sure why but it just happened and took a while to correct. (form is a sequence of traditional moves, and your supposed to pretend you’re actualy fighting someone so looking at the floor was a big NO)
Oh and I never really got why you needed to memorize the times tables, I can work them out in my head pretty fast when needed so why memorize something I don’t really need that often?
Actually, I’m a college student. In one of my classes, just before we took our midterm, my teacher said “I know some of you like to look around while you are thinking. However, I don’t want to get the idea that you are looking at your neighbor’s paper while you are thinking, so if you want to look around, look up”
Interesting. Maybe I’m overreacting, but I really got the impression that it was that these kids didn’t know how to settle down and concentrate.
Hmm.
BTW, this girl knew her times tables. She just wouldn’t look at the paper long enough to figure out that the story problem was asking her to do 9 x 9. Once she read it closely enough to figure that out, she said, “Oh, 81!” I asked her if she knew her times tables, and she said yes, up to 12x12. So that’s not the problem.
