elementary school math-fact challenges

[chhotii]

Here's what I don't get: I've been told that the MCAS is un-timed. (Is this true?)

If this is so, why is there so much emphasis on doing the math-fact sheets as fast as possible? Timing them and so forth? For some kids, rising to the challenge will work. But there are some kids (such as Sophia, and at least one other kid you know...) for whom the timer causes so much activation of the sympathetic nervous system that it impairs both performance and learning. In a big way.

Mathematicians are not judged on speed. So why is math treated like a track event in 2nd grade?

Comments

[skreeky]

I sort of do addition that way myself, only it's visual. Base 10 numbers are like containers with 10 spaces, and the container has 6 spaces already full, leaving 4 spaces. You want to add 8 blocks (the items are always perfectly cubical blocks fitting into a rectangular tube), and 4 of them fit into the existing container, leaving 4 to go in the next container. Hence 14. Since it's visual, though, it's essentially instantaneous. I just *see* the way the numbers fit together and that's the answer.

I figure I'm just weird. I certainly never tried to explain this to an adult.

[skreeky]

I'll follow up to say that I have no such visual built into my brain for times tables, and thus I HAAAAAAAAATED them. I still don't know what 7x8 is without thinking really really hard, because I don't have a mnemonic trick for 7s or 8s. I actually have to mentally make a factor tree and multiply the 7 by the 2s until I get there. Sometimes I remember that I can do 7x9 and subtract 7. (9s are great. You subtract 1 from the multiplier for the first digit, and then subtract that digit from 9 for the second: 7-1=6, 9-6=3, so it's 63, and I didn't have to do a whit of memorizing numbers. Incidentally, 63-7 is 56, which I just did with visual tubes.)

I pretty much flunked timed worksheets.

My dad is a mathematician, and I felt much better when he told me that not only does he stink at arithmetic but that most of the "real" mathematicians he knows stink at arithmetic, and that I was going to be really good at the conceptual stuff later. And lo, I was.