Math is a subject that is often challenging for a lot of students, and algebra can be an especially challenging subject that raises novel questions and asks students to think in a new way. The National Assessment of Educational Progress ("NAEP") reports that the number of students taking Algebra I in 8th grade has doubled since 1986 (from 16% to 34%). But, although California standards call for 8th graders to take Algebra I, a 2011 EdSource report found that 1/3 of those 8th graders who took Algebra I scored "below basic" or "far below basic."
These scores raise questions about how students are prepared for algebra, and is examined in Harvard Graduate School of Education's ("HGSE") May/June 2012 Harvard Education Letter, "The Algebra Problem." HGSE suggests that students find algebra challenging because "it is a dramatic leap to go from the concrete world of computation-focused grade school math to the abstract world of algebra, which requires work with variables and changing quantitative relationships."
Tufts University researcher Barbara Brizuela says that algebra should be introduced to students earlier than middle school. "Kids need to develop some comfort with these tools...babies are exposed to written and spoken language, and after six years we expect them to become somewhat fluent with that. In math, we just drop it on them like a bomb." Brizuela's research demonstrates that students who received weekly algebra lessons plus homework in elementary school performed better than their peers on algebra assessments in middle school. Brizuela uses children's natural generalizing ability to "lure [them] into thinking about quantitative relationships that then become algebraic rules." The result is that children use their natural mathematical reasoning.
What methods have you used to teach algebraic reasoning to elementary school children?
The full HGSE May/June 2012 Harvard Education Letter, "The Algebra Problem," is available here.
Meghan Covert Russell
Algebra is the basic of learning mathematics and I am here to discuss about algebra that is,It is that part of mathematics in which numbers and quantities in formulae and equations can be represented by letters and other symbols.
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