A bunch of netizens left messages under the news, involving foreign mathematics education. "People are primary school students from other places, so they may not be able to recite the multiplication table of 1999!"
I find it a little funny, but these comments are not exaggerated. When our family first moved to New Zealand, one day our daughter came back from school and said excitedly that someone had praised her as a math genius. After asking carefully, I realized that there was a question that was 648 MINUS 559, and my daughter blurted out 89. As a result, the students all said that she was a genius and the calculation was too fast! Give them a few Olympic math questions, won't they faint? To know the profoundness of Olympic Mathematics, I once heard that an application problem of Olympic Mathematics in primary schools is related to eggs, and the correct answer is 16.5 eggs!
New Zealand has to use calculators to learn math 648-559, and my daughter's math will be delayed!
But when we look at our daughter's math exam, we find that New Zealand's math education has very different concerns. Its computing power is far from as high as that required in China, and we don't need to find new ideas to solve problems, but we pay more attention to cultivating students' ability to explore, think and solve problems, which is usually more closely combined with practical problems.
There are ABC three water inlet pipes and DE two water outlet pipes in the swimming pool. When tube A is fully opened for 2 hours, tube B is fully opened for 3 hours, and tube C is fully opened for 4 hours, the pool is full. When the DE pipe is opened separately, the pool water will be filled in 1 hour and 3 hours respectively. Q: If Hall ABCDE 5 is fully open, when will the pool water overflow?
This extremely classic pool application problem is familiar to everyone.
To some extent, this is a good question. Students need good imagination and problem-solving ability to answer correctly, and there are standard answers, which are easy for teachers to judge. But in real life, who will be bored to play with the water pipe?
Also about water, New Zealand's math application problems are closer to life.
The design of my daughter's eighth grade math class and humanities class seems to have been discussed, both of which are related to energy saving. Water is a very important resource, so some content is about water. The whole exploration process is very interesting, and the mathematical ability that children should exercise has not been lost.
The math exam requires students to choose an energy-related problem that they are interested in to do math research. My daughter chose the topic of saving water: saving water by shortening the bath time.
During the weeks of "project research", my daughter was as busy as a bee-she often ran to the water meter outside the house to read the figures before taking a shower, and then rushed out to read the figures after taking a shower, making various forms, assumptions and calculations.
After several weeks of hard work, the little girl came to the conclusion that if everyone in New Zealand shortened the bath time as suggested, the whole country could save 176 tons of water. If you take a bath every two days, you can save 27 thousand tons of water a year. In this process, the children learned conversion of time, statistics and other similar domestic knowledge points.
After the project research, each student needs to submit his project report to the teacher for evaluation. Although it is a math class, there is no standard answer to this form of assessment, because each student may choose different topics, even if it is the same topic, the results of the research may be different, because the data collected by eighth-grade students can not be particularly complete in terms of completeness and data volume. Therefore, in such an assessment, teachers can not simply look at the preset standard answers to see students' achievements, but need to understand students' research methods and give targeted evaluation and guidance. I especially like that when teachers point out the problems of children's homework, they will ask some enlightening questions or give specific suggestions for improvement.
For example, a child measures the water consumption of a bath by reading a water meter, and the teacher asks how to ensure that the reading difference of the water meter before and after bathing is the water consumption of this bath. Because the water meter records the water consumption of households, how to avoid including other water consumption in the record?
In addition, the child's calculation result is saving 176 tons of water, which is a lot. The teacher's suggestion is that 176 tons of water should be converted into expressions that resonate with readers, such as how many Olympic swimming pools can be filled, such as money, and so on.
Some readers may think that it is all this practical problem. How can we widen the gap between college students without doing such a sophisticated topic as Olympic Mathematics?
After living in New Zealand for several years, I feel that the mathematics education in their school is by no means a gap between college students!
Once, the math director of the school had a meeting with his parents. As soon as the news came out, our parents' WeChat group in China became very lively, and the voice of registration became louder and louder. Of course, it is well known that China children, especially those who have finished primary school or even junior high school in China, do well in mathematics in New Zealand schools.
In order to make the math director prepare for this meeting more pertinently, some people organized parents to send their concerns to the group in the form of solitaire and transfer them to the school together.
"What is the purpose of learning mathematics?" It's a topic that I especially want to hear from the math director.
On the day of the parents' meeting, the math director said nothing about the relationship between math learning and exams, but said a lot about the relationship between math learning and brain and mentality.
1.？ Learning mathematics is to develop the growth of the brain.
Learning mathematics is not to memorize many mathematical concepts and improve calculation skills, but to stimulate students' love for learning, exercise and develop students' brains, so that they can face unknown challenges and problems in the future.
2.？ Learning mathematics helps to change the fixed mentality and cultivate the growth mentality.
Learning mathematics can be used as training to break the mindset. The views of "I have no mathematical mind" and "I was born poor at mathematics" are typical manifestations of mindset. Although we understand everyone's differences in mathematical ability, breaking the mindset does not mean that all students can reach the same level of mathematics. However, through continuous efforts, students should realize that our brains can be developed, which can help children cultivate a growing mentality. The growing mentality is more conducive to the development of the brain.
Doing wrong questions is a good thing because it is more conducive to brain development.
According to the director of mathematics, some studies have found that when people do wrong questions, the movement in their brains is much more active than when they answer correctly, and the development of their brains is more significant. In this way, it is a good thing to do wrong questions to develop the brain! Even if your grades are not good, you should persist in facing the challenge, because it is mental gymnastics!
In New Zealand, math education is not only about brushing questions on the table, but also running!
I once watched my daughter participate in the math competition of 50 middle schools in Auckland!
The game was held in the gymnasium. Students in 50 schools are divided into one group according to 4 students in the school, 3 students do math problems and fight for brains, 1 student specializes in "sending letters" and fighting for physical strength! Competition1* * 20 questions, 5 points for each question, full mark 100. The first person to score 100 in 30 minutes wins. If everyone fails to score 100 within 30 minutes, the team with the highest score wins.
The game is really fierce! If an outsider suddenly walks into the gym, he must think it is a sports competition! Because children are seen sprinting on the runway from time to time, parents and classmates in the surrounding stands cheer from time to time.
The fastest group, messenger 15 seconds later, got up and rushed to the teacher. On the sidelines, a teacher reported the scores of the leading group to the audience in real time through a microphone. From 10, 15, it quickly reached 40 points and 45 points.
Seeing that the score on the wall is rising, the running in the field continues. The first group of students who got full marks only took 15 minutes. The game lasted until the end of 30 minutes. At the final countdown of 10 second, there are still many messengers in sportswear and sneakers flying on the field. They really don't live up to their mission!
In my daughter's group, three children from China do problems and one from Europe delivers letters. No one can get 100 in 30 minutes, but the score of 70 is above average. Their math teacher didn't pay special attention to this competition, but said "have fun" to the students who signed up.
After coming back from the competition, a classmate who took her daughter to participate in the competition solemnly apologized on her Facebook: "xx, as the messenger of our group, because our correct rate of today's questions is relatively low, you have run a lot of wrong roads. I sincerely apologize! "
How interesting! In this state without too much burden, let children feel the wonderful combination of mathematics and running, and the brain and physical strength compete with each other. Mathematics can be so interesting!
It's a pity that our former math professor in Tsinghua couldn't answer the children's olympiad questions, because the olympiad class required abnormal problem-solving ideas. Good science education is not a strange way to teach students to solve problems. I especially agree with this professor's exclamation. After I understand the concept of mathematics education in New Zealand schools, I feel more deeply that the purpose of doing things is everything. If abnormal problem-solving methods are generally pursued in this mathematics teaching, I am afraid it is time to re-examine the purpose of education.
Text /Sherman @ New Zealand Education
Daguan Shijia specially produced.