Methods - Introduction
Perhaps the best way to understand the methods of instruction
that I advocate is to go to the Counting, Addition, Subtraction,
Multiplication and Division tabs, paying special attention to the
videos
that you will find there. Those videos allow me to demonstrate
the methods that I have in mind. Here on this page, and on the ones
that follow, I introduce
those methods and explain some of the reasoning that has led
me to them.
For the moment, I simply want to distinguish
the method used for teaching children to model word problems from
the method used for teaching children to use shortcuts.
- To teach your children to make models you must expose them to all the different types of problems, and explicitly show them how to make the model and what to count. It is a very traditional form of teaching. The burden is on you to show your children what to do.
- Teaching shortcuts is completely different. You will still need to pose word problems - but the burden is now on your children to come up with clever ways to solve the problems. It is not your job to show your children these clever ways - in fact, that would be a counter-productive thing to do. Your job is to figure out what your child is trying to do and to help with that method.
| 1. How Do You Teach Modeling? |
| 2. How Do You Teach Shortcuts? |