I recently wrote a post about Math as Characters. As a follow-up, I wanted to post a picture that Meredith drew me a few months ago...I just found it. It shows her numbers zero through nine as she thinks of them, including their color. Perceiving numbers, days or the week, or other sequential items as people is called Ordinal-Linguistic Personification, or OLP. It is a subtype of synesthesia.
I will try to describe her numbers' personalities the best I can here. She could probably write pages about each number since they have many independent stories. For one example, once they had a cooking competition among themselves that lasted for a few weeks. They divided up into groups and they each had one type of food to work with. Merebith and Dogot were the judges...
Perceiving numbers, days or the week, or other sequential items as people is called Ordinal-Linguistic Personification, or OLP. It is a subtype of synesthesia.
1 - God Boy Since he is "number one" or "numero uno" as they say, he is pretty full of himself. He has a halo and wings.
2 - Confused Girl She is confused because she is made up of both curves and straight lines. She's kind of dumb.
3 - Partyboy Boy Since he's made of curves, he's really fun and hyper.
4 - Normal Girl She is holding a snail that is branded with the number four. All of her snails are branded with the number four because they are like her "herd." She's pretty average because she is made of straight lines.
5 - Cool Boy He's cool because he has a "cool" curve.
6 - Lonely Girl She is lonely without her number 1 because she likes to be with other people and her favorite number is 16. She is in a wheelchair because she is clumsy without her partner (number 1).
7 - Innocent Boy You can tell he is innocent from his little propeller hat and ice cream cone.
8 - Twin Boys They are named twin boys because they are conjoined twins. The smaller brother sits on top of the bigger brother. Their symbol is Gemini.
9 - Alien Girl Alien Girl is a tom-boy. She is always CRAZY!!!* She annoys everybody.
0 - Fun Boy He is hyper and likes being happy.
*Meredith wrote that as you can tell by the use of color!
Meredith shared with me recently that her numbers have "upgraded" to actual people instead of numbers with faces. More on that soon.
ReplyDeleteCan she view a number person as having money, say God Boy has a single coin with his name on it? Confused girl can have a curved coin and a straight line coin (of some.kind)? In other words, can the ordinal value be.worked.into the character?
ReplyDeleteRandy
Ctspedmathdude
Great idea, Randy. You live up to your description of problem-solving! :)
ReplyDeleteI will ask my daughter that and see what she says.
From my experience, just identifying that personification may be holding up math progress is a huge step. Then, helping the student to recognize it and describe it himself. Most synesthetes (let alone children with synesthesia) don't realize the way the think is different. Once brought out in open in talked about, they can adjust.
Similar to what you suggested, the girl I know with the tree/volcano example (9 is tree, 0 is volcano and 9+0=0 because trees can't grow in volcanos)... instead of trying to teach a whole new system, she was going back and sort of rewiring her system. For example, finding situations when a tree could grow in a volcano.
My daughter said that she did use a system like that when she was younger (now she can just do the math inherently). There is a picture on this blog of how my daughter viewed 9+7=16. Nine was an alien who gave a gift to a boy who then give it to his sister, number 16, for her sweet 16th birthday.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know this, but she said that number 9 put nine presents in the box and number 7 added seven more presents.
What I find so interesting about this is that it seems to be an organic, dynamic process. If it is recognized in the earlier elementary years when a child is struggling, perhaps they could be assisted in this process.
Thanks so much for your input!
I believe we can start with the person's interest and relative mastery and go from there. I posted about an assistive technology instructor who was wicked awesome in how she problem-solved. He was teaching adults with autism how to read and made books from scratch for them. She would find pictures related to their respective interests and laminate them with short sentences, e.g. NASCAR.
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm wondering about is this. Does Meredith memorize stories for every possible addition combination or after a few such combination stories did the intuition you mention kick in?
What math is she taking now and what are the related challenges? I'd be interested in offering input for whatever its worth. You can go to my blog and email me directly if you'd like.
Randy
Have you listened to my recent interview with Dr. Cheri Florance? It's on the sidebar of this blog. What you describe with the assistive technology instructor sounds almost identical to how Dr. Florance finally was able to reach her son. She used logos (as pictures, not words) and paired them with words to teach her son that "a word was a word" and from there she taught him reading, then speaking, then writing.
ReplyDeleteI believe Meredith did have stories for all of her equations. It can be tiresome for her to explain them all to me, so I didn't get much more out of her. But I remember when we first discovered that, she did say she had pictures for every equation.
Again, it seems to be somewhat of an organic process. It was really just the end of last year (6th grade) when it seemed to come more automatically for her. She began attending a school for bright kids who think differently and the relief from the stress of public school seemed to allow her the space to grow and automate things. That, or it was just developmental and the course of how she learned and transferred her pictures/stories into knowledge.
She is doing sort of pre-algebra work, geometry (big surprise she does well in that). Funny I was reading your post on percentages, because fractions and percentages are super frustrating for her. I recall my husband saying that fractions were always hard because, for instance, he would have a picture of a pizza half-colored for 1/2. Then the same for 1/4, as is often taught. But, then how to add those two pictures together didn't make sense.
I would love to brainstorm more with you on this topic as things come up. I'm planning on doing an interview with a synesthesia researcher soon on synesthesia, children, and learning - I'm anxious to get the word out there about how synesthesia can affect learning and math seems to be a big problem spot!
I'll be in touch and thanks for you input!
If color isn't working for a student then simply cutting out the pieces could be the answer, e.g. give your husband 1/2 then 1/4 and have him cut the 1/2 into two 1/4 pieces and count.
ReplyDeleteOn the other math character post you wrote that your daughter sees the X as a "criminal." When she is solving equations like x + 4 = 5 the story could be the 4 (normal girl) is trying to get away from the criminal and runs to the 5 (cool boy). She leaves so it's -4. You Tweeted about an app for solving. The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives has an activity that uses a see saw to represent an equation: http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/frames_asid_201_g_4_t_2.html?open=instructions&from=category_g_4_t_2.html
Thanks again for your brainstorming. One strange thing about the ordinal personification synesthesia is that (although I don't experience it myself), it has been described to me that often the story lines change daily/weekly or whatever mood the numbers are in at the moment. Therefore, coming up with one storyline may make sense one day, but not the next. But, it could certainly be a useful temporary situation until the understanding of a math fact or equation is automated and fully into knowledge.
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