Showing Your Work

Today Junius came home with information about Math Superstars -- it's an extra math program that his teacher offers during lunch once a week to give kids a chance to explore problem-solving and logic beyond what they're doing in class. It involves some extra homework, but also a chance to do independent thinking work.

I'm a supergeek -- we all know that already -- so I'm totally psyched about Math Superstars.

As part of the info packet, his teacher included a sample sheet of problems for a test-run. I'm proud to say that Junius got five out of six problems right without any help. After he finished, we talked through the questions to see how he got to the answers.

This is the one I was most impressed about:

I mean, I didn't expect a first-grader to understand enough about percentages or probability to get that one right. I expected him to pick the bird since that's where the arrow was pointing.

"How did you know the answer was fish?" I asked him.

His response? "Well, I figured that Julio and his parents might be allergic to dogs or birds, but they probably wouldn't be allergic to fish."

Looks like we've got a qualitative -- not so much quantitative -- researcher on our hands.