The Karate Kid and maths

If you have been reading my previous blogs, you might remember my husband and I have been introducing our children to movies we enjoyed in our childhood. Recently we shared the 1984 classic ‘The Karate Kid’.

'The Karate Kid' was actually better than I remembered… a little cheesy in parts, and possibly questions like “why are those boys being so mean to Daniel?” suggested the bullying themes were a little confusing for our 5 year old… 🫠but overall it was a thumbs up from everyone.

As you can imagine, I watched through my ever-present maths-teaching-lens, and keenly observed the expert teacher moves Mr Miyagi used to take Daniel from Karate novice to expert in the space of only a few months. How is that for 'value added'?!

Mr Miyagi began his tutelage of Daniel by building his trust and working to form a strong relationship. This included fixing his bike, and sharing his love for the art of pruning Bonsai trees. These interactions helped Daniel to feel comfortable to take risks in his learning of karate, and ensured Daniel developed a strong belief that Mr Miyagi's methods and extensive knowledge and experience would help him reach his goal of winning the karate championship.

This mirrors the work we know is so critical in our maths classrooms. Building relationships and trust with our students is key to learning. The effort and time we spend building a positive, supportive learning culture, where we know, and ´see’ each of our students as unique individuals, pays dividends all year.

Mr Miyagi’s next expert teaching move is to work on building Daniel’s foundational skills in Karate. This involved Daniel doing extended and repeated practice of various simple movements in the form of domestic tasks such as washing cars, painting fences and painting decks (very handy for Mr Miyagi!)

As you can imagine, Daniel soon begins to question Mr Miyagi's motives. His novice understandings prevent him from appreciating how these mundane skills are related to karate- but Mr Miyagi knows better!

This too has parallels to our maths classroom. Often students (and parents) do not appreciate the importance of cementing foundational skills. They want to jump to the 'big ticket items' like multiplication facts. I remember being asked over and over by my Year 1 and 2 parents “when will they learn their tables?”.

These facts seem to be privileged in society, perhaps for better or worse they are seared into the memories of most people.

Yet, there are many skills students need to master before they move onto multiplication facts. Foundational knowledge such as part-part -whole, doubling and halving are critical stepping stones that are often overlooked.

Fed up with the domestic cleaning duties, and unable to see their importance, Daniel questions Mr Miyagi’s teaching methods.

The classic, "Why do I need to learn this?" challenge is one that often plays out in Maths classrooms. Unphased by the questioning of his pedagogy, Mr Miyagi calmly explains that the purpose of the repeated practice is to build fluency in foundational skills (I'm edu-phrasing here, these weren't Mr Miyagi's actual words!)

The famous 'wax on, wax off’ movement pattern builds Daniel's fluency and strength which subsequent skills then build upon.

Throughout the movie, Mr Myagi’s Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) was clearly able to be seen. He knew where his student was at, where he needed to go, and how to get him there. 

In maths teaching, this is the exact same formula we need to follow. We need to use high quality assessment to gather data about our students current knowledge, we need to know what understanding we are aiming for in line with their prior knowledge, and we need to know how to translate the data into high quality, sequenced instruction. All this needs to happen while building and maintaining the trust and confidence of our students!

Teaching is not an 'easy' game, but as you see through the smile on Mr Miyagi's face at the end of the movie when (spoiler alert⚠️) Daniel triumphs in the karate championship, it is one of the most rewarding jobs going around! 

So this week I encourage you to channel your inner Mr Miyagi by thinking about the foundational skills your students may need more time and space to master. Provide them with opportunities to develop their fluency (games, flash cards etc), continue to work on building your relationships with them and help them to see that with hard work and persistence, they can be winners in the game of maths! (Bonus points if you can somehow get your car washed in the process!)

Have a great week!

Ange🎲🎓

P.S. You can download the PDF version of this blog to print or share with colleagues here.