Miss Regina - Thoughts On Education
February 16, 2005
One a morning a student walked into my kindergarten class announcing that tomorrow was his brother’s ninth birthday. “So,” he explained, “that means that today he is eight and eleven-twelths.” As a teacher, I immediately wanted to know how deep this child’s understanding of such a concept was and asked, “What does that mean?” “Well,” he continued, “it’s like this, if you have a doughnut and you cut it into twelve pieces, each one is a twelth, just like there are twelve months in a year and tomorrow he’ll have all twelve. It’s fractions, my brother taught me about them.” Some other children looked curious about this concept so we drew some pictures to illustrate the point on a more basic level; a box with four squares (each one is a fourth), a pizza with eight slices (each one is an eighth), a cookie cut into two equal parts (each one is a half). The student decided to explain the doughnut scenario one more time, to drive the point home I suppose. When he was finished a little boy raised his hand and asked, “It’s your brother’s birthday tomorrow, I get that, why is he getting a doughnut again?”
I thought this was such a clear example of how children learn at different rates and how they assimilate new information based on what they know. Exposing children to new and challenging concepts is essential to learning, but in the end, they'll get it when they're ready.
Take good care,