Math Word Problem Struggles

Kai does very well in math normally, but there are areas where he really struggles.

I had him do coordinate plane word problems on his online Khan Academy program the other day.

The first problem stated that an ad was as 4 inches wide by 3 inches high. The upper left corner of the ad was given as (-6, -2) on the coordinate plane. Kai would have to place the four corners of the ad.

I thought this was a very easy problem for him.

So I was a little surprised when he didn’t know where to begin.

I asked him if he knew where one corner of the ad was. He tentatively moved his cursor to place the point in the wrong spot.

I stopped him and asked him to read where the sentence that gave the coordinates for the upper left corner.

He was starting to get agitated, and he did not pick up the fact that all he needed to do was to plot a point at (-6, -2).

I wrote out (x, y) on a sheet of paper and asked if he knew the x and y coordinates of the upper left corner. He would not answer the question.

I then told him that the he needed to plot a point at (-6, -2) and asked him to point on the screen where that point is. He waved his hand wildly, not pointing to any particular spot. He was getting more agitated, and I was starting to get that way, too.

I finally explained that -6 on the x coordinate meant that we needed to count six places to the left, and -2 on the y coordinate meant that we needed to count two places down. This was not the first time we have worked on coordinate planes. This really should not have been so hard.

I finally got him to place that first point. I breathed a sigh of relief as I thought the other three corners would be easy.

I was wrong.

He started to place the next corner in the wrong spot.

I stopped him. I pointed out that the first point he plotted was the upper left corner. When it says “upper,” does it mean that it is at the top or bottom? He answered bottom.

Huh?!

I was getting very frustrated.

I drew a rectangle on the paper. I asked him to point to the upper left corner, and he was able to do so. I asked him to write down the coordinate of the upper left corner. He resisted.

I yelled that he needed to write it down.

Now he was getting more upset.

If the upper left corner was at (-6, -2) and the height was 3, how far down to we count to get to the bottom left corner?

I thought I was giving away the answer but he just did not seem to understand any of it.

My frustration boiled over, and I was shouting my questions at him. He was yelling back saying that he never wanted to Khan Academy with me again.

My wife came downstairs to find out what was going on.

She suggested that she could take over for me, but I didn’t want to end on this sour note.

I had Kai take a five-minute break, which extended longer than that. For most of the time he was still yelling that he wanted to do this with Mom, not Dad.

Finally, my wife encouraged him to come try again.

I spoke very softly. Okay, we know where the upper left corner is. And we know the height is 3. Let’s count down three from the point we already plotted.

Finally, with me pretty much giving him the complete answer, he was able to plot out the other three corners.

And after he completed this one problem, he was able to do four more similar to it all on his own.

But it was an eye-opener for me how he struggles to comprehend the simplest things that are in word problems. It showed me how reading comprehension is still such a big issue for him.

So, we’ve got a couple of big things to work on: Kai’s reading comprehension, and my patience.

I think that progress with the latter will be essential to making progress on the former.

Math and Yoga

I often have my son do extra math work on weekends via the online Thinkwell math website. Kai is now about three-fourths through the sixth grade math program.

Recently, he has been motivated to do several assignments each weekend by the incentive of collecting a set of flash cards, one at a time, of the elements of the periodic table.

Kai usually enjoys math, and is advanced for his age. But it’s not at all like he is a math genius who can solve advanced problems all on his own. No, Kai often needs help.

I always sit with him while he is doing the work. Kai tends to get distracted and not pay attention to the video when the online professor is explaining the topic. When I see Kai’s eyes wandering, I point at the screen and redirect him.

After the watching the videos, there are problems for the student to do. And that is where I am needed the most.

Kai loves doing math as long as he feels confident in what he is doing. But as soon as it gets even a little difficult, he wants to quit.

“This is too hard!”

I try to encourage him.

Sometimes that is not enough.

“I can’t do it!”

I try to help, but never by just giving him the answer. Rather, I ask questions that will help him think through the problem.

“What is the formula for area of a circle?” I ask. I want him to say “area equals pi r squared.”

Instead, he says, “Six times ten” as he gives some of the numbers, incorrectly, that were on the assignment.

“No, Kai, don’t tell me the numbers. First, just tell me the formula for area of a circle.”

Too often, by this point, Kai’s anger has already escalated to where he doesn’t listen to me. He starts writing things down on paper. I try to stop him as he is heading in the wrong direction. And as I do so, his anger is fully boiled.

“I hate this! I am never doing Thinkwell again!”

I suggest we take a break and come back to this later.

He is mad, but he agrees to do yoga with Mom. Anything with Mom instead of Dad is welcomed at this point.

Kai’s therapist recently gave us a dvd of yoga techniques that we can do with Kai at home. My wife wanted to try this out with Kai. She tells Kai that he can earn two periodic table flash cards if he does yoga, then goes back to complete the Thinkwell assignment.

We watch the video and try to follow along with the yoga instructor. According to his therapist, Kai is supposed to know all of the movements.

But he mostly is goofing along rather than doing them seriously.

Still, by the time the video is done, he is in a good enough mood to give Thinkwell another try.

This time he listens to me.

Let’s write down the formula for area of a circle, I suggest. He does so.

Now, what is the radius, I ask. He tells me the diameter.

Are you sure that is the radius? He sees his mistake and corrects it.

Now what do you do with the radius? Multiply it by itself.

Good, I encourage him. And we go through the problem step by step.

He gets the answer correct and he is now happy.

I ask him fewer questions on the next problem, having him do more by himself.

And soon he is able to do them with no help on my part.

Afterward he goes upstairs to collect his flash cards from Mom.

She gives him one for completing the Thinkwell. But he was goofing around and did not do the yoga well so he does not get the bonus card.

He does not like that, but doesn’t protest for too long. He realizes that he did not do it well.

Later, after dinner, he asks Mom if he can do the yoga again. This time he will do it nicely he says.

And so he does.

Scorn for Dad, and Mom, Too

When my son gets mad, he says some mean things. But sometimes, if you can maintain your sense of humor, what he says is funny.

Over the summer, we are having Kai get some extra math work in by doing an online math program called Thinkwell. I was tipped off to this excellent resource by my blog friend, Shiroi Tora, who writes about his experiences raising his 2E son.

Kai generally enjoys doing the Thinkwell program, but occasionally he doesn’t know how to solve one of the problems. In those situations, I ask him questions that make him think about the problem differently. The idea is to help him to figure it out without my giving him the answer.

But once Kai starts to get frustrated, he doesn’t listen, starts to whine and complain, and wants to give up. And that frustrates me.

If I lose patience, I will raise my voice. Of course, that never seems to get him to pay attention any better. It just leads to increased frustration on both sides.

Yesterday we had one of those situations. As often happens when he is angry with me, Kai started yelling that he did not want to be my dad anymore. (Ha, I really need to teach him that he should say that he doesn’t want to be my son anymore).

But then he recalled that he wanted to play water balloons later. As Mom had already told him that she did not want to get wet on this day, he knew that I was his only option. So, in the midst of his rage, he started saying, “Well, you can still play water balloons with me.”

I told him that I might not want to play water balloons with him since he did not want me to be his dad anymore.

He then started to cry a bit and apologized for saying that. He said that I could be his dad.

He went on to say that when he was really mad he loved me only 50% but now he loved me 60% so I had attained the next level, and that meant that it was okay for him to play water balloons with me.

That brought a smile to my face. He noticed, and asked me why I was smiling.

I told him that I loved him 100%, even when I am angry with him. Then I said that I would be happy to play water balloons with him.

And we did play. And had great fun.





And after that, we further cooled off on this hot afternoon with some sorbet. His anger was long forgotten.



But, after we got home from our trip to get sorbet, it was time for our weekly Skype call with my wife’s parents in Japan.

On this occasion, as we were running late for dinner, I went outside to grill chicken while my wife initiated the Skype session. Kai had gone downstairs to go on the computer.

Usually, it is a challenge to get Kai to say much to his grandparents and he rarely sits through an entire Skype call. If he is busy doing something, it is often hard to pull him away to talk to them. So, on this occasion, my wife decided to start talking to them alone.

When I came inside with the chicken, my wife was done with the call. She said that she had taken the laptop downstairs toward the end of the call but Kai did not say anything to his grandparents.

I went downstairs to tell him that dinner was ready. He was furious.

He said that he was mad at his grandparents, but that did not make sense. After asking him more questions, I found out that he was mad at Mom because she had Skyped without him.

When I told my wife what was going on, she was surprised. Who wouldn’t be? Kai never seemed to care about the Skype calls that much before.

He then came upstairs and said that he was not going to eat dinner. He told my wife that he did not want to be her Mom anymore. Ha, now it was her turn to be the object of his scorn.

He angrily said that he wanted to Skype his grandparents. We tried to tell him that the call was over and they were offline. But, we realized that it would be easier just to get them back online than to get Kai to calm down.

So my wife called them up on the landline and asked them to come back online.

And we connected with them via Skype again.

So, after all that, did Kai have a lot to tell them? Umm, not so much.

But he did say a few things. And he was happy to see his grandparents.

And then he calmed down. And he did end up eating dinner.

And by the end of the evening, his love for us was back up to… well, I’m not sure. But I think it was more than 60%.

Math and Art

Math remains one of my son’s favorite subjects.

At home, we are having him do some extra math work through IXL, a website that enables kids to practice a wide range of math topics at levels from pre-K through eighth grade.

Lately, Kai’s preferred topic usually involves shapes. First, he was just interested in learning shapes beyond the basic ones he knew years ago. These include things such as knowing the difference between a rectangular pyramid and a triangular prism. After that, I showed him how to calculate the area of rectangles, triangles, parallelograms, and trapezoids. Most recently, we’ve learned about vertices, edges, and faces.

And when I say we, I include myself. The IXL site is great for testing your abilities, but it doesn’t really teach the concept. So, when Kai was interested in knowing about vertices, for example, I found that I had to research the topic myself before I could teach him as I had forgotten what I learned so long ago.

This past weekend, we were invited over to the home of a family we had met recently. My wife and I were able to speak with the other adults when we kept Kai occupied with a pad of paper and a pen. Later on, I saw that he had filled the page with pictures of various shapes, and the formulas for calculating the area of those shapes.

I don’t have a picture of that sheet, but below is a page that Kai doodled at school on his break the other day.

It is interesting to see that Kai’s art abilities have improved. My wife and I could hardly believe that he drew the shapes on his own, but he insisted that he received no help. And these days he is much better able to stay within the lines than before. I’m not sure if that is an indication of improved patience or better fine motor skills.

What is most interesting, though, is what he chose to draw. Even on his free time, the boy just can’t stop thinking of shapes!

Math Class

During the first week of school, my wife was disappointed when my son brought home some math homework that was easier than the work he was doing in kindergarten. So, she wrote to his teacher.

It turns out that the school is changing its math curriculum and had temporarily placed some kids in easier classes as they thought that it might take them some time to get used to the new methods that were being used.

But Kai was obviously outperforming his assigned group so they gave him a placement test. Now he is taking math with fifth graders. It sounds like he may be the only second grader in the fifth grade class, and, as far as we can tell, there are no kids taking 6th grade math there.

Last year, he was taught math individually. So, it will be interesting to see if he can learn math in a group setting. The teachers report that so far he likes being with other kids and is doing well.

We liked the individual attention he got before, but it will be good if he can continue to learn in a more typical classroom environment. Though if he keeps progressing at this rate, he may be back to individual teaching as there may not be other kids at his level by next year.

Now that would be a dilemma that we would gladly face.

A Warning About Unsupervised Internet Usage

Let this be a cautionary tale for all you parents whose children use the Internet.

We had gotten used to our son using the computer and going on the Internet by himself. Oh, I know we should have been monitoring his activities, but frankly, it was a relief for us. For years, Kai didn’t want to do anything by himself. Being an only child who hardly ever has other kids over, that meant that he constantly wanted either Mom or Dad to play with him. Even when he is watching a video, he wants at least one of us to sit and watch with him.

Do you know how stressful it is have your child want to spend every waking second at home with you? Oh sure, it is endearing. And maybe if he ever behaves like a typical teenager who avoids their parents like the plague, we might look back on this with fondness.

But, for now, we are thrilled when he does anything on his own.

The past several weeks, as Kai has been so interested in the periodic table, he has gone online often to find information about elements. At first he wanted our help to find particular websites, but soon he became adept at not only finding his favorites, but also looking for new sites that he’s never seen before. Just on YouTube alone, he’s found dozens of songs about the periodic table, or videos of people discussing various elements. Who knew that would be such a popular topic?

We relished the break we had when he was occupied on the computer, and we turned the other way.

Until the other day, when I went downstairs to check out what he was so engrossed in online. He had been strangely quiet, not like when he is watching element videos when you can usually hear him shouting with delight.

As I peeked around the corner, I could see that he was staring intently at the screen. And then I was horrified. He was watching…

Pi

Yes, he was watching a YouTube video about the mathematical symbol (π) that showed pi to who-knows-how-many digits. Worse than just watching, he then started copying down all the numbers. Knowing my son, he will be obsessed with it. He won't be able to stop. He may even memorize it to hundreds of digits.

And it is all because I was too lazy to monitor his Internet activities.

Be vigilant, people! Don’t let this happen to your children! Don’t let them go on the Internet unsupervised or they too may discover Internet pi.


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This post was submitted for the S-O-S Best of the Best series on Media and Kids With Special Needs, which will be published on June 21, 2011. You find more information and read other submissions here.

Toys? Games? Math!

My son was bored on Saturday afternoon. I suggested a game. No, he said, he did not want to play any games. How about building something with Legos? No. We can read. Or, maybe play some Wii. No and no.

Finally, Kai decided what he wanted to do.

He wanted to do math.

We went on the computer and I found a website that had math games. He played one that involved matching fractions, decimals and percents. Level 1 started out with easy problems, but by the time Kai got to Level 10, he was matching 5/6 with 83.3% and 11/12 with .917. He was able to answer that 1/400 = 0.25%, while 1/250 = 0.4%. I thought that was not bad for a boy who just turned seven years old.

Then he found out that there were math videos on the same website. Now the thought of watching videos about mathematics probably would not excite most kids, or most of you for that matter. But, Kai couldn’t be happier. That the topics were new to him, and probably well beyond the interest of most first graders, only seemed to intrigue him even more. The first one he wanted to watch was “What is a prime number?” The next one he selected was “What is prime factorization?” The third one was “What are divisibility rules?”

How many kids would choose to spend a Saturday afternoon learning about prime factorization? For that matter, how many grown ups even know what it is? I certainly wouldn’t have been able to tell you anything about it before watching these videos with my son.

And yet, Kai was spellbound. This boy, who can’t seem to sit in his chair for more than 90 seconds at a time while eating dinner, stayed seated the entire time while the narrator explained how to find the prime factorization of 525. This boy, whose mind never stops wandering when he is supposed to be doing his school homework, had a laser-like focus as he listened attentively to the divisibility rules for the numbers one through ten.

After he finished watching the videos, he finally got out of his seat – just long enough to get some paper and a pencil. Then, he was back in his chair as he replayed each one. On second viewing, he took notes the way a dedicated college student might in his favorite class.

When Mom got home later that afternoon, Kai couldn’t wait to go over his notes with her and to teach her all the exciting things he had learned. That night, he brought all of his math notes with him to bed, wanting them close by the way most kids would want to snuggle with a favorite stuffed animal.

But, who needs stuffed animals, or toys, or games when you have math?

By the way, for those of you interested, the prime factorization of 525 is 3 x 5 to the second power x 7. If you need more of an explanation, please contact my son.

If you are curious to see the math videos that fascinated my son, they can be found here.