Teaching Elementary Mathematics— Urmila Devi Dasi
Ideally, young children should be exposed to mathematical concepts from the time they
can manipulate objects. Ideas such as bigger and smaller, and more and less, form during
that time. As a child grows, parents should speak to him or her about the mathematics of
everyday life—how many plates should be put on the table, how many cups of flour go in
the cake, how many inches wide the bookcase needs to be, how many miles have been
covered in the trip, and how many gallons of gas the car uses each mile.
Children who are frequently exposed to such conversation, related to what they are
experiencing at the moment, develop an internal “sense” of math. They know what five
“means” and have a huge advantage as they enter school. For such children, their first
mathematics instruction can be with simple manipulatives, discussion, pictures, and
worksheets. The hardest thing for them to grasp is usually place value, as it is rare that a
child has any but the vaguest idea of such a concept before entering kindergarten. While
base ten blocks are one of the best materials for teaching place value, in order to learn
with them, children usually have to again and again get out the correct blocks in response
to a number, and give the correct number when seeing blocks. It can take months to
understand that a 2 in one place means quite a different thing from a 2 in another.
Children without much or any prior mathematics base can take anywhere from one to
four years to master the basic sense of numbers. So, when moving ahead with teaching
“carrying” in addition or “borrowing” in subtraction, the teacher must always be alert to
any indication that the child is acting from rote memorization rather than understanding.
Such children need a tremendous amount of exposure to manipulatives, and should only
work problems exclusively with paper and pencil when they consistently display a
through understanding.
While the published texts that are best for teaching math in the primary grades, such as
Miquon, use extensive derivation rather than calculation and algorithms, it is often the
children who would benefit most from this approach—those with little prior
knowledge—who find it challenging and frustrating. We wish all children could grasp
that adding nine means one less than adding ten, but find that even repeated exercises
with concrete objects and seeing a pattern is insufficient for some children, who may
make it more difficult for themselves by insisting on learning through brute rote
memorizing.
Children who’ve been exposed to math in their early years, or who are able to gain the
same understanding in the first months or years of school, find great excitement in the
discovery of the reliable and logical patterns that allow math to be an exact science.
It’s fairly obvious which children are learning the concepts and which are rote
memorizing. Understanding is demonstrated when a child can explain or show the how
and why of an answer. It is also shown when a child knows when to apply a learned
formula. Children who have used brute memory to “learn” math will often or consistently
apply a process wrongly or become confused when a problem has a slightly different
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wording or form. Sometimes a child’s difficulty with a simple procedure will be apparent
when he or she cannot understand a more advanced process. For example, a child who
cannot grasp how to add fractions with unlike denominators may betray his or her lack of
understanding of the meaning of the more foundational process of finding equivalent
fractions.
I attempt to teach, therefore, by having understanding precede practice and memorization.
Some math experts maintain that through repeated practice without understanding,
understanding will come. I do remember learning place value in such a way when I was
about six years old and have experience of this method working for older students. Yet, I
have also seen many older students struggle or even fail because the instability of years
of memorizing without understanding caused their problem-solving knowledge to tumble.
Finally, it is necessary for the child to form a mental “bridge” between concrete and
abstract understanding. Merely using manipulatives doesn’t guarantee that this bridge
exists. Generally, the first step is to have the children use blocks, etc. and then blocks
while the teacher writes. Next blocks with the student writing, then writing only. It is best
if this procedure can then be repeated with another type of object.
With the principle that understanding should precede or at least accompany
memorization, we start the beginning student with counting. The child needs to know the
relationship between the verbal numeral, written numeral, and number of objects. We
therefore have him or her relate tangible objects with numerals, either that are pre-written
or that the child writes. There should be much practice with seeing a two or three-digit
numeral, saying it, writing it, and getting out the corresponding blocks.
While this process is being mastered, the child engages in simple addition. Sometimes
this is done by comparing different groups of blocks, and sometimes by using a scale. In
a similar way, the children gradually learn measurement, fractions, time, estimation, and
so on. Hopefully, it’s not necessary to list the standards or general scope and sequence
expected for various grade levels, as such information is easily available from the
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
I continue to have regular review of all mathematical principles and operations as we are
learning new skills. I follow this policy of regular, ongoing review right through high
school. It is essential that children work the same types of problems many times long
after they’ve understood the concept. The reason for this is to develop an “automatic
reaction”—the child has done so many computations of distance, for example, that he or
she could practically answer such questions without thinking much about it. The child is
so competent that he or she no longer thinks about, or perhaps even consciously
remembers, the full why and process. Such “automaticity” can be compared to the way
we drive a car once we’ve been driving for many years. We’re hardly consciously aware
of our driving processes.
Once a child has grasped the essential concepts—usually by the end of third or fourth
grade—we use manipulatives only when visual representation, verbal explanations, and
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practice still leave a child confused. For example, I recently helped a sixth grade boy who
said he couldn’t “get” multiplying fractions. Multiplying fractions is one of the simplest
operations—one multiplies the numerators and multiplies the denominators. Doing so
usually makes more sense to a child than does adding fractions. Children always want to
add the denominators and usually need much time and thought before they understand
that ½ and ¼, for example, are not the same types of “thing.”
In this case, I demonstrated the reason of the process by using the principle that
multiplication can imply area. In other words, if one is multiplying 3 times 4, one can
build a rectangle that is 3 in width and 4 in length. In the same way, using some
ingeniously developed fraction squares, we were able to see and feel that 2/6 times 1/3
was, indeed, an area that was 2/6 length and 1/3 width. We were also able to have
tangible evidence that the 1/3 “cut” the 2/6 pieces each into three. It was interesting to the
student to grasp that multiplying with fractions gave him a smaller number, as he had
assimilated the idea that multiplying means enlarging. We discussed, drawing diagrams
and using the manipulatives, how multiplying by 1/3 really means dividing by three. Both
he and I supplied several real life examples of multiplying with both whole numbers and
fractions.
Perhaps the most difficult and rewarding aspect of teaching mathematics to elementary
students is helping them to develop systems of derivation rather than calculation. I
always teach the mental process of derivation—sometimes in several ways—before
teaching a calculation formula. Of course, to derive answers successfully, children have
to not only have a sense of numbers and their relationships, but be willing to risk thinking
in a way outside of the textbook or other than what their parents model when they do
their homework.
Mathematics is exciting—the logic and interrelationship of systems, the thrill of
understanding how objects fits together, and knowledge that allows us to facilitate our
life’s goals. When children grasp these elements and apply them in their other studies and
their lives outside of schoolwork, we feel truly successful.
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