Don't be put off by the vocabulary

The use of words gets in the way of doing maths. In one study, they found that children could not do calculations based on Pythagoras’s Theorem, but they could do calculations using “three, four, five”. Apparently, children were frightened off by the word “Pythagoras”. For young children, it is a long and a strange word. They try to remember it, and fail because it is such a strange word. They think that because the name of the theorem is hard to pronounce and remember, that what the theorem says must be hard to follow (and what is a theorem anyway, anything that is a “Theorem” must be hard). The phrase “three, four, five” comes from the building industry. Naturally, when bricklayers are building buildings they need to get the corners at 90°. To do this they have a loop of string marked into 12 equal sections. They are taught that they if they peg a length three long to the ground, and then take hold of the string at the point where there are four sections on one side and five on the other, and pull it tight, they will get a right angle where the pegged three sections meet the four sections they are holding. When pupils are taught about “three, four, five”, three words that they recognise and aren’t intimidated by, they find no difficulty with the concept embodied in Pythagoras’s Theorem. Once again we observe how the use of words gets in the way of maths. At Puppet Maths, our puppets introduce our pupils to strange words like “theorem” in a fun and non-threatening way. As a result they come to accept these words as just another word in their vocabulary. They are not put off or intimidated by them anymore and as a result they can focus on the important thing - the underlying maths. This way, we help them succeed rather than be distracted and put off by nomenclature.