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Elementary School-Aged Kids
Reply to "3rd Grade and Multiplication"
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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous] MCPS starts multiplication in a slow way in 3rd grade (more towards the middle of the year). It is reviewed again in 4th grade, and the 5th grade teachers remind parents that students need to know their basic math facts with rapid recall. I would strongly encourage you to start working on multiplication as soon as possible, in a regular way, so that your child knows it off by heart. It will make word problems and multi-step processes so much easier, by freeing up brain space for working out the rest of the question. [/quote] Please don't do this. It's important that kids have opportunities to explore multiplication concepts, and work with manipulatives, arrays and repeated addition to figure out problems before they start to memorize their facts. Memorizing math facts is important, but there is plenty of time to do it if you start in the second half of 3rd grade and 4th grade after they've had those experiences. Kids who learn memorization first, before they explore the whys of multiplication, can end up with brittle understandings of multiplication, which will trip them up when they get to higher level math in middle school. -- a teacher [/quote] Oh please, multiplication concepts are pretty simple...my kids both understood the underlying concept when they were five. It's not like we're talking about calculus here.[/quote] A different teacher here, and there is so much to explore in multiplication. If your five year olds understood the distributive, commutative, and identity properties, arrays, factors, and multiplication as an inverse to division...well, more power to 'em. But I have honors high school math students who rely on memorization who can't figure out 7x12 in their heads, while my third grader can do it in about 3 seconds by adding 70+14. Obviously I couldn't agree more with the previous teacher.[/quote] Yup. Memorizing facts is good. Understanding conceptual foundations is good. You need both if you're going to progress in math. BOTH.[/quote] First teacher here, and sequencing them is important. Kids who have been taught the multiplication is about memorizing facts, often don't do the heavy lifting they need to build conceptual foundations. On the other hand, kids with a strong conceptual understanding to at least a mid third grade level easily understand the point of memorization. If done, right memorization takes a few months. So, starting mid third instead of earlier still gives them plenty of time to get the facts down before they need to use the facts fluently in multidigit computations and fraction work in fourth and beyond. [/quote] I'm the "BOTH" PP, and I completely agree. Anecdotally, as a Montessori student (and I see it's still done today with my two young kids), we spent a lot of time breaking down numbers and putting them back together in sets, arrays, and so on from the early years and on through 4th (when I stopped attending and moved to public school). Memorizing multiplication facts came in the middle of what would be considered 3rd grade. By then, memorizing them was easy-peasy. Division and fractions also came pretty easy. [/quote]
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