#greg tang

What inspired you to start working on helping children and adults understand math? What struggles do you find they most frequently face?

I was inspired to help children in math when I was volunteering in my daughters' kindergarten and first grade classes. One day while tutoring math in my daughter's first grade class, I noticed that every dot on the dominoes we were playing with had a pencil mark, which meant kids were counting them one at a time instead of adding them up quickly.

I noticed so many kids were doing math the hard way – they were counting instead of adding, memorizing instead of understanding, and struggling instead of learning. I set out to show them how to think about numbers in smarter ways by writing a series of picture books, starting with The Grapes of Math. I've been teaching math and creating materials ever since!

It seems like your approach centres around games, to what learning style do you feel this appeals most?

The reason I focus on games is because I believe the secret to being good at anything – music, sports, school and of course math – is practice, lots of practice. If I want to help kids become better at math, I need to figure out how to get them to practice. The one thing I know all kids like is games, so that's why I'm focusing my efforts there. My goal is to develop games that are 100% math, teach the most important strategies, give kids the repetition they need, and are so fun they're addicting!

How did you develop your approach to teaching math?

For years, I did not ever look at what other people were doing, programs were teaching, or books were writing. I didn't want to be influenced by current teaching methods because I wanted to figure out my own approach.

I started doing lots and lots of school visits where I had to teach hundreds of students at a time, and had very little time to work with them. The result? I had to develop very intuitive explanations that kids could understand quickly, easily, and without concrete manipulatives. This turned out to be such a blessing in disguise, because it forced me to develop teaching methods that develop abstract, non-visual thinking skills – which I believe is the secret to being good at math.

How do you think mathematics should be approached when working with students of different learning styles?

When kids are young, the ways they each learn best varies from child to child. My goal is to understand these differences so I can develop teaching methods that leverage their individual strengths. Ultimately, however, I want to teach them in a way that will give them the abstract, algebraic thinking skills they need for higher math. If I can do that, then I know they'll enjoy math and be successful in whatever field or career they choose.

Have there been any particularly spectacular success stories? Any fun anecdotes?

My favorite game is called Kakooma because it gets kids to do as many as a hundred or more calculations in their heads when solving a single puzzle. And they love it!

I brought Kakooma to a Title I school in Baltimore and the kids got hooked on it. After just one month, 4 students were solving 9-number puzzles in under 20 seconds and one student solved one in just 8 seconds. This is absolutely amazing considering the average time for an adult is about 3-4 minutes!