After a 10-year break from college courses, high school calculus, geometry, algebra and basic elementary math, I'm back at it! What I have realized while diving back into the content is that I remember bits and pieces of the information. I was not able to complete any of the questions without referencing my textbook, at first. I wonder if this is what young children feel like after returning from summer break and staring at their math homework that they had mastered only 90 days prior?
Part of the difficulty I experienced was due to the terminology being something that I don't use in my every day life. There are not many people I know that analyze a conditional statement for "fun". I have noticed that my 4-year-old son often has troubles with if-then scenarios, but I guess I can't blame him when I struggle at times too! He doesn’t always understand the phrase, “If you go to the bathroom and wash your hands, then we can go to the park.” He immediately rushes out the door without thinking twice about any of the steps in between that might need to happen. Sometimes we just need to stop and think about whether a statement makes sense or whether it has any instances where the answer would disprove the statement.
A friend who was struggling with the terms and explanations related to reasoning mathematically was directed to this link (and shared it with me) and it is a wonderful video to engage anyone who wants to learn about this topic! If-then statements are everywhere and it is nice to have a real world explanation versus a textbook for examples.
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