To “toot my own horn,” so to speak, I have believed that one of the most important concepts to the achievement of success in math classes at elementary, middle and even high school levels is a fundamental understanding of place value.
As a special educator, I have long been frustrated, and am, if anything even now more frustrated, with our system that forces too many concepts per year on many youngsters and mandates that everyone learn grade level standards.
If we were permitted to take the time to teach foundation concepts to MASTERY and to keep them maintained, I believe subsequent learning would flow more smoothly.
I am reading an article entitled “Mathematics and Academic Diversity in Japan.”
There is a method recognized in Japan as being effective in teaching mathematics to students with LD. It is called, in this article, the Suido Method (I already did an internet search and came up dry, except that you will find this article). I would like a comprehensive overview of this method. The article offers some examples.
In discussing teaching adding 6 + 7, it is mentioned that the teaching of this needs to be combined with a strong sense of place value. And on the final page, the authors state, “There is a significant emphasis on visual representations and on careful analysis of mathematical problems. Unlike th estrong emphasis on procedural fluency in arithmetic found in mathematics curricula for students with LD in the United States, there is significant attention to important concepts such as place value.” YES!
If anyone here knows anything about this instructional method, please advise.
Re: Teaching important math concepts
Yea, me too… I”ve seen some good visual representations for place value (and verbal ones too), including the old standby of bundles of sticks — but in the US they’re generally used as a lightning-quick scaffold to the procedure (Okay, you’ve seen it, you got it, right? Now here’s the procedure… no, I didn’t get it in elementary school either and I still don’t get it, so let’s just get it over with quick, right?”)
I *do* think that we can go too far on the pendulum away from procedure; some folks figure out the concept *from* the procedure (especially if you do build that into the curriculum). You do have ato be careful not to teach the real short cuts that short circuit things — I’m thinking of fractions and exponents — but I’ve got nothing against making it just an automatic response to look at a problem and classify which procedure you have to do, without necessarily going through a conceptual re-imaging of exactly what 2/3 adn 5/6 would look like. (It would be nice to be able to click on the textbook and have the visual there, though!)Can you imagine… being able to graphically make a common denominator… then translate to numbers…
Sorry, I don’t know the particular method, but I heartily agree with the concept.
I do work on this with base 10, adding 6 + 7 and other sums 10 and up with concrete objects and/or dots on paper, regrouping for example 6 + 7 into 6 + 4 + 3 and then into 10 + 3. I find that a month or two of really working on this makes a world of difference in kids’ general math success.