Re:Math education: It’s not about numbers, it’s about learni...
by jacobolus on Tuesday July 11, 2017 @06:56PM
(#14748775)
They learn about negative numbers and multiplication before they learn to count past ten? Or they just learn counting without learning how to write the numbers?
Re:Math education: It’s not about numbers, it’s about learni...
by emilecantin on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @10:22AM
(#14752705)
The latter. My daughter actually learned it because we mixed different learning methods early on (we don't anymore, it confused her), but you have to admit that writing numbers greater than 10 kinda involves multiplication (by powers of ten, but still), so it makes sense to learn multiplication first. Negative numbers were seen while learning addition / subtraction (the concept was basically adding a negative number), which made a lot of sense too.
Re:Math education: It’s not about numbers, it’s about learni...
by inanutshellus on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:47AM
(#14761676)
That sounds wonderful. My kids are about the right age to do this, and I'm curious, are there any English-language versions of this text?
The math program I use with my kids is this one: http://www.defimath.ca/ecole-maison/ (in French)
It was developed by two mathematicians who actually studied in classrooms what worked on kids when teaching math. They've come up with a method where kids learn negative numbers and multiplication _before_ learning positional numeration (numbers greater than 10, with units, tens, hundreds, thousands, etc.). I've seen first-hand how these concepts just click in my daughter's mind, and how she often comes up with the new concept herself when you introduce the prerequisites in an order that makes sense to her.