What if we taught math the way we teach Physical Literacy?
By now you know that at Seed and Sprout, we are crazy passionate about physical literacy. But do you know why? To explain a little about why we think physical literacy is so important, here’s an analogy for you: what if we taught math the same way we approach teaching movement, sport, or physical education?
It might look something like this. When your child is very young, maybe two or three, you decide what kind of math they should do. Maybe you always wanted to be great at addition, and so you decide to prepare your child for addition. Maybe you see a competitive future in subtraction, or maybe you think you’re a family who has never done well in math. You don’t really like math, so maybe you decide not to introduce your child to math at all.
And then your child starts kindergarten. On the first day of school, the teacher assesses all the students and decides which ones will be put in to the math track. These are likely the ones who have had some previous experience with math. The rest of the kids? Don’t worry about it. Math’s not for you. Oh, we’ll support the rest of your learning, maybe you’ll play some games with numbers, but we won’t invest anything into your math skill set. You probably just weren’t born good at math.
The other kids though, the math kids? These are the ones who showed an early aptitude for math. Maybe they could pick up a pencil or write some numbers. We would take these kids and highly specialise them. We would put them into the addition only stream, or subtraction only, and we would hammer these kids with only the very specific skills they need to excel in their category, and keep them separate from learning any other math skills. Then we would start competing them against each other.
So we would have the addition competition for the kids who are learning addition. If your child is not the quickest learner? They get cut from the team, and are out of the math program. That’s it for their math career. They don’t get to continue learning math.
When we describe it like this, you can see it is ridiculous. Of course we would never teach math like this. We know all kids deserve to learn math skills. We don’t know who the next math geniuses or software engineers are, or who will just use math to balance a chequebook or calculate tips at a restaurant. Regardless of what their math futures may or may not be, we’re going to teach every child the necessary, foundational skills so as they get older they can choose how much math to bring into their life.
That’s why we’re passionate about physical literacy. We believe fundamentally, that movement skills should be taught the same way. We don’t mean learning specific sports, like volleyball or football, but basic, fundamental movement skills. Every child should be confident running, jumping, leaping, skipping, throwing, catching. Kids need all these skills so that they can choose how to apply them as they grow older. We don’t know which kids will have the focus and determination to become the next Olympians, and we don’t know which kids will use their skills to just play frisbee in the park with friends once in a while. But it’s fundamental that we teach all kids the skills they need and allow them to make their own choices
Have any questions or comments? What do you think about the way we teach movement and sports skills? We’d love to hear them from you! Drop us a comment or head to our instagram and let’s chat!
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