A Real Maths Learning Moment
Sometimes real life maths turns up when I least expect it. Maths learning moments suddenly appear. And if I take advantage of these moments, some wonderful real maths learning can happen…
Yesterday the girls and I were watching art history videos on the Kahn Academy website. Before we moved off the site, I did a bit of exploring and found something else that looked very interesting: computer science. There were tutorials for using JavaScript codes to produce drawings and animations.
“Wow! Can we try that?” asked Sophie.
It all looked a bit complicated but was in fact very simple. Soon we’d all written programs using codes to produce simple drawings.
We then started to think more about the codes and what all the numbers meant. We found out that the screen can be thought of as a number plane 400 pixels wide and 400 pixels high. Some of the codes involve plotting points using x and y coordinates. The origin is in the top left hand corner of the screen.
“That’s different to maths,” I said. “Usually the origin is in the centre of the two intersecting perpendicular axes.”
All that sounded a bit complicated to the girls so I needed to elaborate…
I explained the number plane to them by scribbling on a piece of paper. Then I found a couple of Gizmos so the girls could manipulate the points themselves, working out the x and y coordinates and the
quadrants. Finally, I found a Brainpop video and quiz about coordinates.
The girls were very interested. And they understood the maths concept despite it being above their supposed maths age level. I guess that is because they saw a use for it. They want to use these maths skills when writing their programs. Even though the origin is in a different place, number planes and coordinates are the same for computer science as they are for traditional maths.
I have just looked at the description of another computer science tutorial the girls want to try: Using Maths Expressions… If there’s one thing computers are good at, it’s doing math. You’ll never need a calculator again.
Maybe the girls think they will be learning more about computer drawing. In actual fact, they are also going to be learning lots more maths.
Sometimes I wonder if people think unschooling maths means that no maths is actually being learnt. But I know my unschoolers learn lots of maths. They are going out there in the real world and learning all kinds of concepts. It doesn’t matter whether these concepts are on the maths syllabus or recommended for their age, or not. That’s not important at all. What is important is that the girls find these concepts interesting and useful… and they want to learn about them. And my job is to seize the moment and provide the necessary resources to satisfy their captured interest.
Taking advantage of the moment is a wonderful way to learn. Do you have any wonderful maths learning moments to share?