For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for October 23, 2015

loophole

Sadly, that bias against early visualization can actually undermine the learning of math and create fear of math. It seems to be most common in teachers who view math as a black box and a memorization task.

I used my fingers and my head

She could have taken her shoes off and counted on her toes.

I use my fingers when my calculator battery wears out…

If using her fingers helps her solve the problem, then why not let her do it? Besides, with practice math will become second nature to her and she won’t need her fingers to count on.

The system now is too busy teaching them to let them learn. I used to teach and I still tell people tone of the best things you can do is let a child enjoy reading. Let them read Batman or the Sunday funnies but let them enjoy reading. If you force them to read “proper” materials, you can turn them off reading and if they hate to read, you have closed an invaluable means of learning.

There was a formal method for using fingers back 5 or 6 teaching fads ago. Now we have Common Confusion which makes math so complicated even engineers get confused, seriously. The main aim is a nation of Marching Morons.

Lynn’s Notes:

I had a terrible time with math. I used my fingers until I was stopped. Then I learned that if I kept my ruler on top of my desk, I could use it to help me add and subtract.

As a youngster, I had difficulty learning to add numbers. My Dad taught me how to play cribbage and suddenly, addition was no problem at all!

WE? I didn’t know the teacher was adding them too!

Using fingers is now acceptable again. I was helping one of the neighbor’s kids with a math problem and was horrified when she started using her fingers. She said it was how they are taught these days.

with this new and wrong PEMDAS system of math,a calculator no longer works anymore,same goes with fingers

I once saw on TV a Korean method of “counting on your fingers” called Chisanbop…basically using your fingers as an abacus. Me? I count by using my pencil to put dots over the numbers in the same pattern that you find on a pair of dice. So, still counting one number at a time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chisanbop

I used to work in a remedial math lab at a community college. Once was helping a girl (pretty sure she had a high school diploma) with a problem by breaking it down into steps. On a subtract step that involved a borrow she started to count on her fingers.

At least she didn’t have to use “New Math”. I never did learn the multiplication table, always did horribly at math and hate it to this day.

Fingers are good. Watch for boogers!

Nothing wrong with using fingers. If my administrator challenged me I would justify it my informing hir that many of my students were tactile learners and this was facilitating their stronger modalities.

and I will avoid the old joke about guys being able to count to 21…

“Using fingers is now acceptable again….”~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Apparently, they have finally come to their senses! It’s about time.It’s amazing how many people have the totally inaccurate idea that their ‘way’ will change the world, and your ‘way’ stinks. What’s wrong with ‘Live and let live,’ and just let us do our own thing?!

Geez. . .whatever works. I still cross out the top numbers and put in the “borrowed” figure when I subtract large numbers. I really don’t understand the big deal . . . I can guarantee the planet have never fallen from their orbits when I do my math. . .And, come to think of it, you’re allowed scratch paper for the math sections of any test. . .

My son had difficulty with his basic math until we bought him a simple video game (for the Commodore 64 if you can believe it!) called “Math Blaster”. It was a variation of the old Space Invaders game where the problem was given at the bottom in the “gun” and the idea was to “shoot” the right answer. It helped him immensely, in all 4 basic math functions. Too bad they don’t have such simple games anymore.

Math is stressful enough for most of us without the teacher calling us out in front of the whole class. That can be very traumatic. My baby girl has even burst into tears over her frustration with math and some teachers are no help, they act like all the kids should just “get it” immediately.

“I had great difficulty from the start. Still do now, never made past Trigonometry and Algebra II.”~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Me, too. I’m 85. and I’ve yet to find a use for those two.

I wonder if the teacher has pondered why we use base 10?

I’ve always felt that how you Learned wasn’t as important as the fact you did Learn! I was a certified Military Instructor and after Retirement I taught At Community College. USN 65-95

Cribbage is an excellent “math” tool. Plus any of those card games where you have to count the remaining cards in your hand when someone lays down all of their cards and goes OUT :)

dlkrueger33The abacus is not a calculator. It just reduces problems to five or less which anyone can do in their head, and records it. .At one time, and presumably still. the abacus was considered a martial art, with dan rankings. Above fourth, the exam required working the instrument strictly in one’s head – with the result of people sitting with their eyes closed, fingers moving, and having to “read” off the answer at the end..In 1947, the US Army installed a state-of-the-art computer in Tokyo to handle payrolls for the pacific. This was vacuum tube, special climate, three person to operate, UNIVAC level machine. To demonstrate it’s wonders, they competed it against a high dan, in addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and problems involving all four. He beat it in all but long division and got the right answer in that. While the machine operators were entering the problem. he was both entering and working it, so while they were pushing the button to process, he was reading off the answer.

If she’s using her fingers to do the math, at least it means she’s doing the math.Is she deliberately trying to single Elizabeth out?

We got a call from our son’s second grade teacher requesting a conference. The problem, the teacher told us, was our son was cheating on his math problems..He was doing complicated arithmetic problems in his head. The teacher felt this was much too advanced for a 7 year old child.. He refused to verbalize how he got his result, and he wouldn’t write down his steps he took, so she concluded he must be copying someone else’s work. (Our son hated to write anything down. We discovered he was extremely near sighted and got him glasses.).At the conference, alone with us and the teacher, Our son was given several 4th grade arithmetic problems which he answered correctly. The teacher reluctantly agreed that was proof he hadn’t been cheating. So, she accused my husband of coaching our son which undermined her teaching methods.(Aside from the family playing verbal math games while driving, there was no coaching.) .At the time, our son actually liked doing arithmetic problems.After she shamed him in class for ‘cheating’ he stopped enjoying doing anything related to math..Don’t get me wrong, our son had a lot of difficulties in school.He learned very quickly, but he was always disorganized and never could understand the need for what he considered “busy work.”.There are some great teachers in our school system.There are others who are intimidated by those students who don’t fit into the norm.

This is one of the reasons we older folk learned our addition tables by rote. And our subtraction tables, and our multiplication and division tables.

Fingers, tokens, teddy bears, dinosaurs, pencils, and crayons are all fair game in my classroom, and yes I am a teacher.

Of there’s always the old joke:PE TEACHER: “So what Is it, ‘two and seven is eight’ or ‘two and seven are eight’?”ENGLISH TEACHER: “Obviously, it’s ‘two and seven are eight.’”2nd GRADER: “You’re both wrong. The correct answer is ‘two and seven are NINE’!”

in honor of comicsfan

Leave the kid alone. She’s adding up isn’t see?