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Leave a thought in the comments after reading. Read: Patent for young inventor

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Leave a thought in the comments after reading. Read: Patent for young inventor

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Invention Convention

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Details

Published on Friday, 09 June 2017 15:00

Written by Lori Kriegel

Danbury kindergartner's eggs-traordinary invention earns national award
King Street student to get patent sponsored by UCONN
He may only be five years old, but experience has already taught King Street Primary School student Nico LaRosa that necessity is indeed the mother of invention.

Nico's family chickens have a habit of pecking his arm fairly aggressively ‑ leaving him no choice but to find a solution, hence the "The No-Pecker Egg Collector."

Last weekend, his invention placed second nationally at the 2017 National Invention Convention and Entrepreneurship Expo (NICEE) in Washington, D.C. in the kindergarten-second grade category.

"When I would collect the eggs, they would peck at me," Nico said. A chicken named Maniac was the worst, leaving Nico to create an impenetrable sleeve that would leave just his hand free to pick up eggs. "Now I'm not scared they're going to peck me."

The egg collector started out as part of the school district's invention convention. Nico's invention was then selected at the regional competition to enter the statewide convention held annually at UCONN Storrs.

A recognized inventor at the UCONN event in May, Nico was again selected to move forward - this time to the nationals in Alexandria, Virginia.

The Invention Convention is part of the science curriculum. For three weeks students engage in coming up with ideas and putting them into motion. One of the crucial learning curves for students is to figure out how to solve problems with their inventions and tweak them to perfection. The invention convention fosters interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics learning for students from kindergarten through eighth grade.

Gwen Gallagher, assistant principal at King Street Campus, said that Nico was one of 10 students in an afterschool program designed to help students with their inventions. He was the only student from the school to go to the regionals.

More than 300 students from 16 states competed at the invitation-only event held at the headquarters of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Connecticut was the largest delegation with 91 students.

The University of Connecticut at Storrs has offered to fund a patent for Nico's invention. Nico is the son of Andrea and John LaRosa and the brother of Lucas, also a budding inventor.

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Danbury kindergartner's eggs-traordinary invention earns national award

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Details Published on Friday, 09 June 2017 15:00 Written by Lori Kriegel Danbury kindergartner's eggs-traordinary invention earns national award King Street student to get patent sponsored by UCONN He may only be five years old, but experience has already taught King Street Primary School student Nico LaRosa that necessity is indeed the mother of invention.

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Parents who fear math may easily pass that anxiety on to their children. (Photo: Corbis)
"Numbers scare me." "I'm not a math person." "I hate math." If you're one of the many parents who have been known to make such pronouncements, you might consider biting your tongue next time, as a new study has found that parental math anxieties are often passed on to kids.

"What surprised us the most is that when parents are trying to help with math ... it can actually backfire," lead author Erin Maloney, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago, tells Yahoo Parenting. "It can happen even though their efforts can be incredibly well-intentioned."
STORY: Teachers Tell All: 20 True Confessions
The team of researchers, led by University of Chicago scientists Sian Beilock and Susan Levine, looked at nearly 450 first- and second-graders and their caregivers. They found that the kids of math-anxious parents learned less math throughout the school year and were more likely to have math anxiety themselves - but only if they often received parental help on arithmetic homework. The team's findings were published Monday in the journal Psychological Science.
STORY: Teachers' Tips to Make Sure Your Kid Doesn't Forget Everything Over the Summer
Their previous research discovered that students learn less in math when they have teachers with math anxiety, and now parents are added to that equation. "There is research showing a genetic link as well," Maloney says. "But now there's also a socialization link."

Math anxiety is common - one in five people report experiencing it on some level - and while the behavior of parents who frequently sound off about their hatred of reading and writing would likely rub off on their kids, too, that would be a less likely scenario. "What's interesting about math is that it's socially acceptable to say things like, 'I hate math,'" Maloney notes. "But you wouldn't hear people bragging about how they're bad at reading."

In addition to it being acceptable to talk about being numbers-challenged, there are stereotypes at play - particularly gender-based ones, about how girls are bad at math ( the subject of some recent T-shirt controversies). Plus, math can be a difficult skill to master. "Math is very cognitively demanding - it requires working memory and the ability to manipulate information in your mind," Maloney says. "So it can be very challenging and make people quite nervous."

Is the solution for parents to run out and enroll in math classes, as Britney Spears reportedly did to help her sons earlier this year? Perhaps, as classes such as " How to Learn Math: For Teachers and Parents" are popping up around the country. The class is offered by Stanford University mathematics professor and YouCubed founder Jo Boaler, who aims to raise levels of student engagement, particularly among girls and students of color.

But specific strategies for parents to follow are still being researched, Maloney explains. "We can't just tell parents - especially those who are anxious about math - 'Get involved.' We need to develop better tools to teach parents how to most effectively help their children with math." Those might include math books, games, or apps that "allow parents to interact with their children around math in positive ways," the study suggests.

You might start by just checking in with your child's teacher in order to familiarize yourself with new teaching techniques and strategies that may look unfamiliar to you, suggests Maloney. And most importantly, she says, be aware of what you say about your own math fear around your children and try to avoid "perpetuating any negative stereotypes about math, gender-based or otherwise."

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How Parents' Math Anxiety Can Affect Kids' Achievement

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"What surprised us the most is that when parents are trying to help with math ... it can actually backfire," lead author Erin Maloney, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago, tells Yahoo Parenting. They found that the kids of math-anxious parents learned less math throughout the school year

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WATCH: Click the video to watch a short clip. Then answer the question below by adding your comment in this column only. 

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WATCH: Click the video to watch a short clip. Then answer the question below by adding your comment in this column only. 

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How could this scene relate to ways we can build a STEAM community?

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Coach Carter Our Deepest Fear speech

Launched as a beta version in 2009, SafeShare.tv has gained popularity as the safest way to Watch and Share YouTube and Vimeo videos, and is widely used all around the globe by educators so their students can watch educational material without the fear of inappropriate videos showing up.

Are you sure you want to do this?

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Coach Carter Our Deepest Fear speech... - SafeShare.tv

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Launched as a beta version in 2009, SafeShare.tv has gained popularity as the safest way to Watch and Share YouTube and Vimeo videos, and is widely used all around the globe by educators so their students can watch educational material without the fear of inappropriate videos showing up.

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This unique, interactive curriculum builds 21st-century skills of innovation and creative thinking by exploring traits and processes that lead to innovations. The lesson plans use the extensive oral history collection of contemporary and historic innovators.

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Innovation 101 - Educational Resources - The Henry Ford

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This unique, interactive curriculum builds 21st-century skills of innovation and creative thinking by exploring traits and processes that lead to innovations. The lesson plans use the extensive oral history collection of contemporary and historic innovators.

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Students explore a variety of powerful tools (like drawing, voice recording, taking videos, and more!) to show what they know in the way that works best for them.

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Seesaw | Elementary Learning Experience Platform

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Seesaw | Elementary Learning Experience Platform

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Elementary Learning Experience Platform | Seesaw

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Seesaw is a Learning Experience Platform with 25M+ users, enhancing elementary education, engagement, and school culture while improving academic success.

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MathMINDs Games are storybook board games that combine math, history and literacy in a highly connected experience. Through each story, youʼll learn and play games as you explore real events from the game's country of origin.

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MathMINDS Games: South of the Sahara | New Storybook Board Games

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MathMINDs Games are storybook board games that combine math, history and literacy in a highly connected experience. Partner with us to bring the first game suite, South of the Sahara, to more families!

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Classroom tools and lessons

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Streamline class management while providing every student with individualized learning experiences. Create, customize, and collaborate on lessons to help learners grow their skills. Use virtual classrooms to promote learning any time, anywhere. Keep meetings, documents, and reports all within reach.

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Google for Education - Online Resources for Teachers & Students

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Access educational and online tools for teachers and students, including lesson plans, apps, and games to advance learning in the classroom at no cost.

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By Alana Foley, Talia Berkowitz, Marjorie W. Schaeffer, Christopher S. Rozek, Julianne B. Herts, Sian L. Beilock, and Susan C. Levine

If you heard a parent say, "Let's read a bedtime story" to his or her preschool child, would you be surprised? Probably not. But what if the parent instead said, "Let's do some bedtime math"?

Many parents think of reading and storytelling as part of their child-rearing duties, but think of math as something kids learn and do at school. Even if parents know that math is important to their children's future academic success, there is another reason math may not be part of family life: many adults fear it.

The good news is that there are lots of math-rich activities parents can do with their kids at home that can help boost children's math learning, even when parents themselves are anxious about math.

Math Anxiety: What Is It?

Math anxiety is specifically triggered in math-related situations.[1, 2, 3] Simply calculating a tip on a dinner bill can send some people into a panic. Math-anxious individuals avoid math by taking fewer math courses and staying away from math-intensive careers.[4] They also dislike encountering math in everyday situations, such as calculating sales tax.[5] Avoidance of math, in turn, can lead to lower math proficiency.

You might think that if math makes you anxious, it's because you just aren't good at math. But having math anxiety doesn't necessarily mean you are bad at math.[6] For people with math anxiety, the stress of doing math robs them of the focus they need to buckle down and concentrate on the math task at hand.[7, 8] This lack of focus makes it difficult to juggle numbers in your head or keep track of information when solving problems, leading to errors.

Interestingly, math anxiety actually takes its biggest toll on students who perform at the top[6]-the very students with the potential to lead successful careers in STEM fields. These students tend to use more advanced and efficient strategies when solving math problems and therefore suffer most when their focus is depleted by math anxiety.[9] Their worries lead them to make mistakes or to adopt less effective problem solving strategies. This effect of anxiety holds true around the globe, even in countries high in math performance.[6]

You might also think that math anxiety only arises once math gets complex, but we have found that some children suffer from math anxiety as early as first grade.[10, 11] As with older students,[12] math anxiety does not reflect poor math potential, but rather interferes with children's ability to do math. Importantly, math anxiety can arise from early experiences in school as well as at home.

Math Anxiety as a Barrier to Positive Family Math Experiences

When parents are math anxious, they may not naturally think of engaging their young children in math talk and activities. In addition to avoiding math, math-anxious parents sometimes share their fears about math in overt ways, such as saying, "I'm just not a math person," or "We're not a math family."

Math avoidance and negative math talk are not the only consequences of math anxiety in families. Parents' math anxiety can also lead to less effective parent-child math interactions. For example, we found that when math anxious parents frequently provide homework help, their children learn less math over the course of first and second grade than when they provide this help less frequently.[11] Thus, the well-intended homework help of math-anxious parents can backfire. This finding does not mean that math-anxious parents should avoid math interactions with their children, but rather that they need help to engage in a constructive way.

Supporting children's math learning can start when kids are young, and can be part of daily life. Both parents who are afraid of math and those that love math can promote their children's math learning by creating positive math experiences at home. First, we'll go over some of the ways all parents can support children's math learning. Then, we'll provide tips for parents who may not naturally embrace family math time due to their own anxiety.

Supporting Children's Math Learning at Home

One great way to support young children's math learning is through play. Blocks and puzzles are go-to activities in many families, and provide many opportunities for talk about numbers and spatial relationships. Board games and card games also provide opportunities for fantastic math talk and math thinking.

Everyday interactions can spark math talk and math thinking as well.[13, 14, 15, 16] Consider setting the table as an opportunity to talk about numerical and spatial relationships: "How many plates do we need tonight?" "How many soup spoons if Johnny doesn't want soup?" "What shape are the plates?" In an observational study, we found that parents who talked more often about number with toddlers (e.g., counting objects and telling children how many objects are in a set: "You have three trucks!"), had children with more developed math knowledge at about four years old.[17] The same was true for children's spatial thinking, another important foundation for math achievement. Children who heard more spatial talk-talk about shapes (e.g., triangle, rectangle), features of objects (e.g., curved, straight), and dimensions (e.g., tall, short)-are better at spatial tasks such as imagining the movements of objects and copying block designs.[18] Importantly, children who have more of these math learning opportunities start school with a stronger foundation in math and tend to show higher math achievement throughout the school years.[19]

When children are older, parents can promote positive attitudes about math by emphasizing and communicating the personal relevance of math to their children. In a recent study with high school students, researchers gave one group of parents materials and access to a website that explained the relevance of math for their teenagers' everyday lives (e.g., video games, cooking, art, sports, cell phones) and also future careers.[20] Another group of parents was not given these materials. Researchers instructed the parents with the materials to talk to their children about math relevance, and results showed that their children took more optional math courses in high school and scored better on the math section of the ACT. These findings suggest that parents can spark children's interest in math, and help their math achievement, by talking about the ways in which they use math in their lives (e.g., budgeting, cooking, building, time management, etc.), and that this approach might work with younger children as well.

How Can Parents Take Control of Math Anxiety?

How can parents overcome math anxiety to help their children learn math concepts and interest them in math? We have found that providing parents with engaging, low-pressure ways to interact with their children about math can help them support their children's math learning. For example, giving parents number books to read to their preschool children helps children learn the meanings of the cardinal number words (that "three" refers to sets containing three objects).[21] We have also found that an app that involves parents in collaboratively solving word problems with their first graders results in more math learning over the school year, particularly for children of math anxious parents, compared to children in a control group that used a reading app.[10]

Just as programs such as Reach Out and Read show that children's language and literacy skills benefit from parent-child shared book reading[22], programs that encourage parent-child math talk and problem solving through math storybooks and math apps help children's math skills flourish. For families with math-anxious adults, using semi-structured, engaging resources can pave the way for positive adult-child math talk that may even spill over to everyday interactions.

So what about that bedtime math problem? Such early family involvement with math has the power to foster a love of math and to set children on a path for success in the STEM disciplines. And that's good news for math-anxious parents.

[1] Dowker, A., Sarkar, A., & Looi, C. Y. (2016). Mathematics anxiety: What have we learned in 60 years? Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 508.

[2] Lyons, I. M., & Beilock, S. L. (2012). When math hurts: math anxiety predicts pain network activation in anticipation of doing math. PloS one, 7(10), e48076.

[3] Young, C. B., Wu, S. S., & Menon, V. (2012). The neurodevelopmental basis of math anxiety. Psychological Science, 23(5), 492-501.

[4] Ashcraft, M. H. (2002). Math anxiety: Personal, educational, and cognitive consequences. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11(5), 181-185.

[5] Alexander, L., & Martray, C. R. (1989). The development of an abbreviated version of the Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 22( 3), 143-150.

[6] Foley, A. E., Herts, J. B., Borgonovi, F., Guerriero, S., Levine, S. C., & Beilock, S. L. (2017). The math anxiety-performance link: A global phenomenon. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(1), 52-58.

[7] Ashcraft, M. H., & Kirk, E. P. (2001). The relationships among working memory, math anxiety, and performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130(2), 224.

[8] Ashcraft, M. H., & Krause, J. A. (2007). Working memory, math performance, and math anxiety. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14(2), 243-248.

[9] Ramirez, G., Chang, H., Maloney, E.A., Levine, S.C., & Beilock, S.L. (2016). On the relationship between math anxiety and math achievement in early elementary school: The role of problem solving strategies. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 141, 83-100.

[10] Berkowitz, T., Schaeffer, M. W., Maloney, E. A., Peterson, L., Gregor, C., Levine, S. C., & Beilock, S. L. (2015). Math at home adds up to achievement in school. Science, 350(6257), 196-198.

[11] Maloney, E.A., Ramirez, G., Gunderson, E.A., Levine, S.C., & Beilock, S.L. (2015). Intergenerational Effects of Low Math Achievement and High Math Anxiety. Psychological Science, 26(9), 1480-1488.

[12] Lyons, I. M., & Beilock, S. L. (2011). Mathematics anxiety: Separating the math from the anxiety. Cerebral Cortex, 2(9), 2102-2110.

[13] Casey, B. M., Lombardi, C. M., Thomson, D., Nguyen, H. N., Paz, M., Theriault, C. A. and Dearing, E. (2016). Maternal support of children's early numerical concept learning predicts preschool and first-grade math achievement. Child Development. doi: 10.1111/cdev.12676

[14] LeFevre, J.A., Skwarchuk, S.L., Smith-Chant, B.L., Fast, L., Kamawar, D., & Bisanz, J. (2009). Home numeracy experiences and children's math performance in the early school years. Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science, 41(2), 55-66.

[15] LeFevre, J. A., Polyzoi, E., Skwarchuk, S.L., Fast, L., & Sowinski, C. (2010). Do home numeracy and literacy practices of Greek and Canadian parents predict the numeracy skills of kindergarten children? International Journal of Early Years Education, 18(1), 55-70.

[16] Vandermaas-Peeler, M., Boomgarden, E., Finn, L., & Pittard, C. (2012). Parental support of numeracy during a cooking activity with four-year-olds. International Journal of Early Years Education, 20(1), 78-93.

[17] Levine, S.C., Suriyakham, L., Rowe, M., Huttenlocher, J. & Gunderson, E. (2010). What counts in the development of children's number knowledge? Developmental Psychology, 46(5), 1309-1313.

[18] Pruden, S.M., Levine, S.C., Huttenlocher, J. (2011). Children's spatial thinking: Does talk about the spatial world matter? Developmental Science, 14(6), 1417-1430.

[19] Duncan, G. J., Dowsett, C. J., Claessens, A., Magnuson, K., Huston, A. C., Klebanov, P., ... & Sexton, H. (2007). School readiness and later achievement. Developmental Psychology, 43(6), 1428.

[20] Rozek, C. S., Svoboda, R. C., Harackiewicz, J. M., Hulleman, C. S., & Hyde, J. S. (2017). Utility-value intervention with parents increases students' STEM preparation and career pursuit. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(5), 909-914.

[21] Gibson, D. J., Gunderson, E. A. & Levine S. C. (2015). Number Word Learning: A Parent-Driven Training Study. Talk presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Philadelphia, PA.

[22] Sharif, I., Rieber, S., Ozuah, P. O., & Reiber, S. (2002). Exposure to Reach Out and Read and vocabulary outcomes in inner city preschoolers. Journal of the National Medical Association, 94(3), 171.

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Math anxious? Not to worry! Researchers at the University of Chicago Science of Learning Center share tips for supporting children's math learning at home. By Alana Foley, Talia Berkowitz, Marjorie W. Schaeffer, Christopher S. Rozek, Julianne B. Herts, Sian L. Beilock, and Susan C. Levine

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STEAM choice cards

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It's like CHOPPED but different

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I'm wondering, how can we incorporate math in some of these challenges? What are you wondering? 

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I'm wondering, how can we incorporate math in some of these challenges? What are you wondering? 