COMET • Vol. 14, No. 04 – 1 April 2013

When the standards are released, they will be available on the NGSS Web site at www.nextgenscience.org/next-generation-science-standards 

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April is Mathematics Awareness Month: K-16 Educators are Invited to Participate in the Energy Challenge

URL: http://www.mathaware.org/ 

In honor of MAM, K-16 educators are invited to visit the “Sustainability Counts!” Web site at www.mathaware.org/mam/2013/sustainability/ for model lessons and a description of a showcase event–the Energy Challenge. Teachers who register at www.surveymonkey.com/s/5G2S32D will receive MAM posters (up to 5) and a certificate of participation after filling out the Sustainability Counts! survey. Please visit www.mathaware.org/mam/2013/sustainability/ for more details. 

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“Number Sense in 1st Grade Plays Role in Later Math Skills” by Lauran Neergaard

Source: The Associated Press via NPR
URL: www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=175275359 

“The gap they started with, they don’t close it,” says Dr. David Geary, a cognitive psychologist who leads the study that is tracking children from kindergarten to high school in the Columbia, Mo., school system. “They’re not catching up” to the kids who started ahead.

If first grade sounds pretty young to be predicting math ability, well, no one expects tots to be scribbling sums. But this number sense, or what Geary more precisely terms “number system knowledge,” turns out to be a fundamental skill that students continually build on, much more than the simple ability to count.

What’s involved? Understanding that numbers represent different quantities — that three dots is the same as the numeral “3” or the word “three.” Grasping magnitude — that 23 is greater than 17. Getting the concept that numbers can be broken into parts — that 5 is the same as 2 and 3, or 4 and 1. Showing on a number line that the difference between 10 and 12 is the same as the difference between 20 and 22.

Factors such as IQ and attention span didn’t explain why some first-graders did better than others. Now Geary is studying if something that youngsters learn in preschool offers an advantage.

There’s other evidence that math matters early in life. Numerous studies with young babies and a variety of animals show that a related ability — to estimate numbers without counting — is intuitive, sort of hard-wired in the brain, says [Kathy] Mann Koepke, [Director of the Mathematics and Science Cognition and Learning: Development and Disorders Program in the Child Development and Behavior Branch] of NIH’s National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. That’s the ability that lets you choose the shortest grocery check-out line at a glance, or that guides a bird to the bush with the most berries.

Number system knowledge is more sophisticated, and the Missouri study shows children who start elementary school without those concepts “seem to struggle enormously,” says Mann Koepke, who wasn’t part of that research.

While schools tend to focus on math problems around third grade, and math learning disabilities often are diagnosed by fifth grade, the new findings suggest “the need to intervene is much earlier than we ever used to think,” she adds.

Exactly how to intervene still is being studied, sure to be a topic when NIH brings experts together this spring to assess what’s known about math cognition.

But Geary sees a strong parallel with reading. Scientists have long known that preschoolers who know the names of letters and can better distinguish what sounds those letters make go on to read more easily. So parents today are advised to read to their children from birth, and many youngsters’ books use rhyming to focus on sounds.

Likewise for math, “kids need to know number words” early on, he says.

NIH’s Mann Koepke agrees, and offers some tips…

“[In summary,] we should be talking to our children about magnitude, numbers, distance, shapes as soon as they’re born,” she contends. “More than likely, this is a positive influence on their brain function.”

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Note on the researcher who conducted the study above: University of Missouri psychologist David Geary was a key figure in the development of the 1998 Mathematics Framework for California Public Schools, Kindergarten through Grade Twelve. He prepared information on how students learn mathematics, the models for mathematics instruction, and the key standards at each grade level.

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Rising Enrollments in Advanced Eighth-Grade Math Courses are Not Significantly Correlated with Achievement Gains on NAEP

URL: http://tinyurl.com/browncenterreport2013 

The first section of this report presents the latest results from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS), both released in December 2012. U.S. students, for example, showed performance gains in reading, mathematics, and science, but a number of the top countries in the original administration of TIMSS showed declines.

The second section of the report examines the prevalence of tracking and ability grouping. “An analysis of data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) documents a resurgence of ability grouping in fourth grade reading and mathematics. Tracking remains persistent in eighth-grade math, with about three-fourths of students in tracked classes.”

The third and final section of the report examines the results of a study that “analyzed variation in state enrollment patterns to test whether rising enrollments in advanced eighth-grade math courses are correlated with achievement gains on NAEP. No evidence was found that they are. States with rising percentages of eighth graders taking Algebra I, Geometry, and other advanced math classes were no more likely to raise their NAEP scores from 2005-2011 than states with declining percentages of eighth graders in those courses.

“A second analysis, again looking at changes in policy and test scores over time, investigated whether boosting the percentage of students in higher level courses is associated with decreases in the mean scores of those courses—suggesting a watering down effect. The evidence is consistent with watering down in all but one course. Negative correlations were found for Algebra I and Pre-Algebra. In those courses, mean achievement gains declined as enrollments increased. Achievement gains in general math courses were positively associated with enrollment changes. All three of these correlations are statistically significant and supportive of the watering down hypothesis.

“Geometry diverges from the other courses. A positive association was found that, although statistically indistinguishable from 0.00, suggests at least a neutral relationship between rising enrollment and changes in NAEP scores. If schools were indiscriminately accelerating students into eighth-grade geometry, one would expect a negative correlation…” 

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Related articles: 

Study: Middle School Algebra Push Yields Minimal Performance Gains” by Sarah D. Sparks

Source: Education Week – 27 March 2013
URL: http://tinyurl.com/edweek-middleschoolalgebra 

“Algebra, Geometry Classes Vary in Rigor, Says Study” by Sarah D. Sparks 

Source: Education Week – 12 March 2013
URL: www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/03/12/26math.h32.html 

While nearly all 2005 high school graduates had taken a course called Algebra I at some point, the content of those classes varied tremendously, according to a new analysis by the National Center on Education Statistics…

“It’s not surprising there’s such variation, because there’s not been uniformity among various states with what is meant by rigorous algebra or introductory algebra,’ said J. Michael Shaughnessy, a mathematics professor at Portland State University in Oregon and the immediate past-president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, based in Washington.

“That’s really one of the reasons the [Common Core State Standards] came about. That’s certainly one of the goals put out by the common core, to balance off across states the mathematics experience that students will get,” he said, adding that the NAEP transcript study may provide a baseline from which to compare how algebra and geometry classes evolve in response to the Common Core…

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This book is an experiment in a new way to put together an edited collection of writings. Chapter 10 of the book (begins on p. 52) contains a brief introduction to a number of topics that are suitable for making into additional chapters (e.g., Students with Special Needs, Information Literacy in the CCSS, Computational Thinking and CCSS, etc.). Potential authors are encouraged to contact David Moursund (moursund@uorgon.edu) or Robert Sylwester (bobsyl@uoregon.edu) about submitting a chapter based on Chapter 10 ideas or other ideas of their own choice. The book will “grow” as new chapters are integrated in.

For other free math education materials from Information Age Education, see http://iae-pedia.org/Free_Math_Education_Materials. To access all of the free Information Age Education materials, visit http://iae-pedia.org/Main_Page.