Build Number Sense with Native Numbers App

Ever heard someone say that they're just not a math person? Native Brain's Dr. Michael Connell, developer of an innovative app called Native Numbers, doesn't buy it. Connell believes the idea that there are people who simply understand math and those who never will is not only false, it is damaging. His app, Native Numbers, is designed to teach any child aged four and up to intuitively understand numbers deeply enough to succeed in math in kindergarten, first grade, and beyond.

 

Before a child can easily crunch numbers in elementary school, a skill known as computational fluency, he must develop a solid number sense. The National Council for Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) defines number sense as the knowledge that allows students to understand numbers and ways of representing them, appreciate relationships among numbers, and comprehend number systems.

Sound abstract? Much of it is, and it's precisely those abstract aspects of number sense that Connell worries are being left out of young children's early math education. Memorizing number symbols and learning to count in preschool is only a fraction of the number sense young children need to learn to be successful in math, according to Connell. The rote memorization that allows many kids to learn to count fluently is misleading; many of those kids don't possess a deep understanding about quantity and number relations. And as a result, they're not arriving in elementary school ready to learn computation. This leaves them with a flimsy foundation on which to build higher math skills, a worrying status for a subject as cumulative as math.

Native Numbers is much lauded by both parents and educators, and for good reason. Its carefully designed, adaptive curriculum provides youngsters with thousands of activities that will help them develop the kind of number sense that both NCTM and the developers of the Common Core Standards for math agree are critical. The app teaches kids number concepts, number relations, number ordering, and counting, and they're required to demonstrate mastery before the app allows them to progress to the next level of difficulty. Each activity has been thoughtfully crafted to discourage mindless jabbing at icons on the screen, and there aren't lots of bells and whistles thrown in simply for the sake of fun. Young children find Native Numbers enjoyable because it is designed to motivate them intrinsically, but it is a serious app without a shred of frivolity.

Both parents and experts have been mightily impressed with Native Numbers. And since this hefty, research-based curriculum is available for free on iTunes, anyone with an iPad and a young child should give it a try.

Beast Academy Helps Elementary Students Learn Math

Problem: Your elementary school-aged child is hooked on comic books instead of on her math book.

Solution: Give her the Beast Academy books by Art of Problem Solving.

Beast Academy

New Problem: Your elementary school-aged child is staying up past her bedtime to sneak more math problems.

Solution: …we’ll have to get back to you on that.

The Art of Problem Solving provides math enrichment activities and instruction for high-performing middle and high school students. It publishes its own line of math textbooks and also has a website where students can interact with a large community of other math lovers, play math games, view video lessons, and more.

With its new Beast Academy books, Art of Problem Solving has expanded its offerings to younger students. The books, designed for kids in 2nd-5th grades, are divided into four levels, from 3A (shapes, skip counting, perimeter, and area) to 3D (fractions, estimation, and area). There are both guide books and practice books available for each level.

The books cover the concepts mandated by the common core curriculum. But that won’t matter to your child. What will matter is that he won’t be able to get enough of them. In the guide books, concepts are introduced and explained by a group of colorful beasts whose color, size, amount of hair, and number of appendages varies. They are friendly and appealing, and they narrate lessons that are presented in comic-style frames. The graphic format allows plenty of opportunities for characters to point to different parts of, say, a number line or a fraction, as they explain the concepts. And because the lessons are presented as dialogue, students are privy to the beasts’ thinking processes as they reason through problems and concepts. The practice books provide problems so students can put their new know-how to work. Beasts from the guide book appear in the practice books, too, offering tips and instructions at the top of each page, which makes the pages feel familiar and accessible and less like a typical homework assignment. As in the guide book, instructions and examples are very visual.

If your child is bored with standard math instruction, struggling in math, captivated by comics, or particularly receptive to visual material, these books are certainly worth investigating. They would serve as great end-of-summer reads, too; children may enjoy reading the appropriate Beast Academy book before the school year begins to introduce them to important concepts they’ll cover in the next grade. Parents can visit the Beast Academy website  to see sample pages from both guide and practice books, as well as learn more about the series and access free, printable pages.