While visiting my fifth grade cousin in New Hampshire last year, she asked me if I could help her out with her math homework. She was having some trouble with long division and was hoping that I might be patient enough (ha ha!) to walk her though it. As I took five semesters of college level statistics, I assumed that showing her how to drop and carry numbers would be a cakewalk. After a half hour of demonstrating my 'skillz my cousin walked away and turned to her more mature seventh grade brother for help.
If you regularly hang out with school aged relatives, you've probably noticed that Investigations is sweeping the nation. Today's Washington Post did an interesting article on this hot new way to teach kids math. While Investigations is linked to better test scores, parents are outraged at the fact that they no longer can help their youngsters with their homework.
Back in my glory days of learning multiplication (circa 1988) my dad forced me to sit out and write out the multiplication tables a billion times, as did his father before him and his father before him. With Investigations, children are steered from memorizing columns of numbers in favor of understanding why 7 x 6 = 42 and not 108. Here's an example:
41 + 15
Old method: It's 56. Why? Because you stacked it together and figured out that 4 + = 5 and 1 + 5 = 6, therefore the answer must be 56.
New way (via the stringing method):
Take the second digit (in this case 1 and 5) and add them together:
1 + 5 = 6
Take the first digit, keeping the fact that this is a double digit, and add them together:
40 + 10 = 50
Take the two answers and add them together: 6 + 50 = 56
Working out a problem using Investigations is supposed to help kids excel in math, which will obviously turn them all into engineers and keep them out of prison. Kids at a very early age figure out whether or not they are a "math person" and the stigma certainly follows them for the rest of their lives. The truth is that memorizing tables doesn't work for every kid, and having an alternative such as Investigations may help those who learn differently. However, like educations fads of yore (remember Phonics?) I have a feeling that when I have children in the next decade or two, I'll still be able to help them with their math homework and not the other way around.
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2 comments:
I wouldn't be so sure that investigations are a fad.
I've seen kids who stare blankly at multiplication tables but compute an algebraic equation quicker than you can read it using investigations.
The kids get to use WHATEVER method works best for them - Can you imagine that the way you showed is only one of about a dozen that exist?
It's awesome.
I think Auntie Sherrie will have to come help Sean with his math homework! LOL Jamie will help him with his French. I'll do English class work. We all have our forte!
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