Another Math Rant in the Making...

[auntbijou]

Yes, you were spared my math rants last school year because of the Incredible Mr. Knickerbocker™, the most Awesome Math Teacher in this district. He, unlike most of the other teachers here, actually makes it his business to find out what the kids that will be coming into his class are learning at their previous schools. And this is why he is

Comments

[bonsaibetz]

Ah, the joys of learning how they have totally botched the teaching of basic math since we were kids. I had my own joy with how my son was learning long division in 4th grade. I tried to show him how to do basic long division when he looked at me and said, "That's not how it's done" then showed me some complicated ass-backwards deconstruction technique he learned that takes up two to three times as much paper as the simple method we all learned as kids. At least he still gets the correct answer and he learned the correct way to multiply numbers.

My deepest empathies. Good luck.

[luci0logy]

Does your ed system have something like the UK's Ofsted inspection system? I cannot believe what these teachers get away with.

Re multiplication: we use something called the grid method, especially for larger numbers, e.g.

http://wvlln.ac.uk/uploads/n1l1gridmethodworksheet.pdf

[tilia_tomentosa]

Wow, I'd never encountered the grid method before!
It seems very unusual to me, but I admit it's very logical.

[luci0logy]

It's what we teach in uk primary schools.

[tilia_tomentosa]

This is how I was taught to do that in primary school, before we learned about negative numbers:

x-5=7
x=7+5
x=12

The rule behind this is that the minus turns into a plus as it goes to the other side.

Then we would check our solutions like this if we had any doubts:
12-5=7