Are multiplication tables still "drilled" in elementary? (course, teachers, major)
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Well,clearly, you're wife should have the master's degrees revoked and be forced to go back to elementary school and learn to spell
I don't know about village's wife but maybe you should. "You are" wife doesn't make much sense to me.
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Originally Posted by skyway31
Can you name one situation in which a kid would have to have memorized a multipilication fact? Meaning, there could not possiblty be a calculator available to them?
I have been in situations where a calculator couldn't be found easily and though those situations are pretty rare (and unnecessary for me anyway) I have seen plenty of situations where it just wasn't practical to keep one joined at your hip, like my example of buying a flat of neatly lined up cans and having to stand there and wait as the clerk counted every can. And the real problem is that they often don't even make the connection that there is multiplication involved in the first place. So many of our kids do not have the prerequisites to take algebra and I'm having to go back and reteach pre-algebra, even as I'm helping them with algebra, geometry, and trig. Some days feel like a big uphill battle and many of the kids just give up and drop out.
A lot of people will find this blasphemous, but, the only real educational value with regards to multiplication is in understanding how the facts are derived. I.E. through repeated addition. Having all of the facts memorized to perfection is of increasingly limited value. No matter how poor a kid or adult is, they will almost certainly be walking around everywhere in life with a calculator on them, in the form of any cheap cell phone having the calculator function on it. And businesses understand customers don't like to play games on the prices of items, so the days of offering an item of clothing for 20% off and not disclosing what the new amount is are going by the wasteside.
Show me a kid who's memorized his/her math calculation facts but has little to no grasp of the concepts and practical applications of math, and I'll show you a kid who's been terribly misguided by his/her educators.
Show me a teacher-and there are many of them still- who feels you can't/shouldn't teach higher level concepts until a kid has memorized all of the mulitiplication tables to perfection and I'll show you a teacher who's so out of touch with the modern world they should leave the teaching profession.
While I agree that it is important to know that multiplication is derived from repeated addition, that is not the only way to *see* the concept. While you don't have to memorize the facts, it really is useful. Repeated addition simply takes too long.
When I teach multiplication, I teach arrays. You can draw a picture of a multiplication fact like 4 * 3 = 12 by using 4 rows and 3 columns and counting the number of boxes. This easily shows that 4 * 3 = 3 * 4 = 12 as well.
Using these concepts is all well and good, but kids with calculators are often without any number sense and will punch incorrect buttons and just accept the answer because the calculator gave it. This leads to all kinds of problems in later math classes. Most of my lower math classes in high school had easy access to calculators, but they still had problems with learning anything beyond arithmetic because they could not tell when things were off. That is why estimation is a good skill to learn also.
Note that if you do not know your multiplication and division facts, it is quite difficult to learn addition and subtraction of fractions unless you use a fraction calculator which will give you the answer in fractions not decimals (these are available, but not commonly seen).
Just like learning to walk before you can run, learning multiplication and memorizing the times tables are building blocks for other math topics taught in school - higher learning such as division, long multiplication, fractions and algebra. Students who have not memorized the times tables will find these levels of math much more difficult than they need to be.
This has been my experience of kids who rely on calculators
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Calculators are great tools for figuring out complex calculations. However, using a calculator takes much longer for simple facts and can result in keying errors. Students who rely on calculators are also weak in estimating skills and are unaware of wrong answers that occur from keying mistakes.
Have any teachers in this thread who are seeing a deficiency of math fact mastery taken steps to address the issue within their school districts? What was the outcome?
Elementary schoolers in our district are repeatedly tested on math facts throughout third and fourth grade. The kids have it down cold by fifth grade. But it wasn't because the curriculum demanded it; the teachers demanded it!
This is all veering off into a different topic all together. What methods are used to teach skills and concepts is an entirely separate, albeit important, discussion. The OP was about mastering multiplication tables. My point is that it's wrong to keep a kid from being exposed to the vast world that is math on the basis of them not mastering their mulitplication tables. There are Algebra teachers who want to stick a kid in the corner and have them work out of a 3rd grade math workbook for the year because they mess up on basic calculation. That's what I'm being critical of..
I have NEVER seen an algebra teacher do this, but then when I taught the kids were tracked and some kids were not taking algebra until 9th or 10th grade.
Actually, when is the last time you ever left home without a calculator? Assuming you carry a cell phone with you, it's likely been a very long time.
I have never used my cell phone as a calculator, but then I don't have a smart phone. And why would I need a calculator for most of the problems I do when out and about?
I've used a cell phone calculator once or twice. I do most math in my head. I had a newspaper route as a kid and and people would ask questions like, "I want to pay 6 weeks ahead, how much will that be?" or "I have $5, how many weeks can I pay ahead?" Calculators and cell phones had not been invented, so I had to figure it the old fashioned way. It still beats pulling out your cell phone.
Yes, and my girl scouts have to know the prices of certain numbers of boxes of cookies. It was $3.50 a box which was a little harder, but now that it is $4.00 a box, they think it's pretty easy. They have been doing that since 2nd grade in Brownies.
I have NEVER seen an algebra teacher do this, but then when I taught the kids were tracked and some kids were not taking algebra until 9th or 10th grade.
Again, why aren't and middle school and high school teachers working with their elementary school teachers to address the issue?
When did I ever say to withhold grade appropriate concepts? In fact, when did anyone every say to withhold grade appropriate concepts?
Wrong. An entire world of math is not accessible to these kids because they never learned the basic calculations and don't develop the math sense they need.
No one said anything about perfection. We said mastery. Students who do not know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide with mastery might be able to graph y = 2x + 1 and vaguely understand the concept, while a student who does have mastery will develop a masterful understanding of graphing y = 2x + 1 and will be able to graph y = 3/2 x - 2 (y equals three halves x minus 2), and also graph the same equation in standard form, -3x + 2y = -2 and be able go back and forth between the two and extend the thinking into more complex problem solving. Meanwhile, the student who still has not memorized their multiplication/division facts can barely make it past counting the rise over run to graph the slope. If you had actually taught Algebra 1, you would know this.
Again, no one ever said this. You are just making stuff up to be a legend in your own mind.
So, an 8th grader walks into your Algebra I class and but hasn't mastered basic calculations. You've concluded the mateial is not accessible to him/her, right? How would you handle this student in your class?
Again, why aren't and middle school and high school teachers working with their elementary school teachers to address the issue?
Teachers have NO clout.
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