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Back to normality, just in time for the weekend.

—

by

Jax Blunt
in

This morning started slowly, as I was up before the children, I should have known to shower quickly. Instead I sat down with a cup of tea and twitter, and before I knew it, I had all three children up, and no chance of a shower til lunchtime. Grumph.

Two and a half hours of maths. I know we’ve had a break, I know it’s been a while, but Big forgot all her times tables and Small lost the ability to multiply our divide by 100. Somehow it seemed longer than two and a half hours. It was a short eternity. But it was worth it when we finally got to the end of Big’s nemesis section and she’d finished year five. I think she was more shocked than pleased, it’s been so long that we’ve been battling with long multiplication. Hopefully it will be a while before we come across anything quite so knotty again.

I also don’t quite understand why Mathletics does it upside down. I always start with the units and then the tens. Just seems logical. They do the tens first, then the units. And as for the questions with missing numbers you’ve got to fill in, well we just did the whole sum on paper. I’m not sorry that’s over, at least for a little while.

Other than that the day seems to have escaped me. I’ve dealt with email, fiddled about and considered programming. Oh, and done washing, tortured the cat, shopped, nappy changed, fed children, chauffeured, fetched tea and started to consider coding again.

I used to earn my living coding. I earned a very respectable living that way. Today I read some instructions and felt my brain dripping out of my ears. Depressing. I know the theory that as you get shot of the placenta your brain falls out too, but actually I think it’s more to do with everything else you’re taking on. It isn’t one set of clothes you need ready in a morning, it’s two plus changes for Smallest, plus pants for Small or he’ll forget. Big is fairly capable these days, though she still forgot the shampoo tonight for swimming. So I’m thinking for many people on much less sleep, is it surprising it doesn’t always work so well?

No. I didn’t think so.

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Comments

4 responses to “Back to normality, just in time for the weekend.”

  1. Tbird avatar
    Tbird

    now, i know I’m easily confused Jax, but I really am confused about the dividing thing… how can you divide the units before the tens? am a bit intrigued!

    Reply
    1. Jax avatar
      Jax

      Must reread post, but the units before the tens is in long multiplication 🙂

      Reply
  2. Lucy M avatar
    Lucy M

    As I understand it, the multiplying by tens first then units mirrors what you would do naturally – ie if I was in a shop, trying to work out what three lollies costing 34p each would cost, I’d automatically do the 3 x 30 = 90 first before moving on to the units – even though when I was at school I was taught the algorithm paper method, which starts with units. The idea is that those who don’t have an intuitive grasp of maths have a greater chance of actually understanding what they are doing and therefore doing it correctly, rather than just blindly slotting numbers into an algorithm and hoping for the best. Our school gives out a calculations policy which shows the natural progression from repeated addition (using pictures, then number line) to grid method and then eventually to the column sum (but I don’t think they do the sum until KS3). A deputy head friend (who you may remember ;o) )posted the following video which is the grid method for multiplication: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5DMbOEtg9o&feature=youtube_gdata_player From the simple point of the view of the algorithm working, it makes no difference whether you start with tens or units – it’s just the poor parents who get freaked out when it’s done backwards from what you remember.

    Reply
    1. Jax avatar
      Jax

      Ah, but from my point of view (and Big’s I suspect) it’s more logical on paper to work from units first, as you don’t need to remember to put the extra zero in, numbers just fill in from the right and then it all works. Will take a look at that video to see if helps at all.

      Reply

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