Math: Coming to an Answer All at Once

Hello All,

Looking for help with explaining the brain-based reasons for why a person (child in this case) can arrive at a correct math answer and not be able to explain the steps or even reasoning behind the thinking.

Can you point me to a resources?

Thank you,
Jennifer

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Permalink Reply by Brittony T. on February 16, 2012 at 7:58am

Well for me, being a dyslexic, I often associate totally unrelated things in my mind and that is how I come up with answers. A typical non dyslexic would not be able to follow my line of thinking, although to me it is a perfectly good line, it wouldn't make sense to anyone else though.

For example if I wanted to get what is 10% of $1.00 The first thing I would do is remember the way to set up percentage problems which is the math formula "IS/OF = %/100.....but really in my head I would have just automatically multiplied 10 x 100...it is only now that I am older that i can backtrack and say WHY I did that, but I often did the first couple steps without having a clear reason of why I did it that way, I just did, it was how the numbers seemed related. I would have automactially said the answer is 0.10, but I may not have been able to explain that at the time, and it wasn't really a trick it was just how I saw the relationship of the numbers in my head and saw how the numbers had to multiply out in order to get my answer. To me math is really a language and sometimes I even give them life almost. I often think in the sense of numbers liking this to happen to them, or not liking that, or not getting along with other numbers in that way.

The child will have to understand how they got there, that is why they have to show their work, it isn't important enough to just get the right answers they need to know HOW they got the right answer because if there is a flaw in their perception of how they get this answer it can screw them up later on in more advanced math.

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Permalink Reply by Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide on February 20, 2012 at 2:41pm

Hi Jennifer, You may find this interesting: http://eideneurolearningblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/jolt-of-insight.html

Many studies have suggested that dyslexics may have a right hemispheric preference for solving problems and even certain types of language tasks. In some cases, students are reasoning by analogy or spatial patterns - so they arrive at the correct answer but may not process how they've done it in words.

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Permalink Reply by Jennifer on February 27, 2012 at 12:41pm

Thank you Brittony and Drs. Eide! Very helpful information as I put together resources for teachers who struggle with gifted students who have trouble "showing their work."