This is hilarious, I have no recollection on how I first started to learn math but I count out dots as i am adding up numbers so I must have used it! I thought I was weird because I don't know anyone else who does that.

Using the dots was a required part of doing the work (i.e. show your work by drawing the dots). It was painfully slow and unnecessary. I only received these lessons for one grade and when we moved to a different school district, my poor teachers didn't know what to make of all of the dots all over my schoolwork!

I remember those dots...and I remember wondering why anybody would use the dots when you could just add or subtract the numbers!

Anonymous wrote:I'm 51 and have been hampered all of my life by laving learned to "count" with dots in my head. I so wish I'd just been drilled to memorize math facts (have similar problem with multiplication tables). To this day I have to "calculate" what 7 x 9 is. Argh!

Hint for 9's: Hold up your hands. Count, left to right the number that you are multiplying (i.e., 6 if it is 6X9, 7 if it is 7X9). Put that finger down. The answer is whatever number of fingers is to the left of that is in the 10s, and whatever is to the right is in the ones. For example, 6X9, back of hands face you, you put your right thumb down, and the answer is 54.

I'm 51 and have been hampered all of my life by laving learned to "count" with dots in my head. I so wish I'd just been drilled to memorize math facts (have similar problem with multiplication tables). To this day I have to "calculate" what 7 x 9 is. Argh!

I sometimes do something similar to PP -- drawing dots like they appear on dice to add. But I'm having a hard time imagining when I do this. I think it's when I'm adding a long line of numbers and I'm already holding hundreds and tens in my head.

Huh. Born in 73, so it seems I'd be in the cohort, but I have no recollection of learning to draw the numbers and touch the dots. What I have always done, though, is add by touching dots as they appear on dice in lines or figures of dots. So if I am adding 7 and 8 I start with 7 and then count as I draw 8 dots. I had a horrible, horrible time with math and can't memorize to save my life so I may have made this coping strategy up in elementary school...I've blocked out all the trauma!

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. We only use TouchMath with our some of our special education students who need multi-sensory techniques for addition and subtraction. Here is the website for more info and products: http://www.touchmath.com/ For general ed students, we use number lines, tally marks and other strategies. In second grade, they start getting timed fact quizzes so they do need to start memorizing addition and subtracting facts.

Thanks for this website! I had no idea what people were talking about until I visited the site. OMG, touchmath seems ridiculous! I'd go nuts if I had to draw the numbers and then touch them everytime to count. Plus, the difference between the open "4" and closed "4" would throw me if I were a kid for sure.

I appear to be the minority here. I also learned Dot Math in elementary school, but I am now very good at adding/subtracting quickly, without counting dots.

Anonymous wrote:I don't get it. If you don't count something (dots, apples, whatever), how would you know that 3 + 2 = 5 (when you are first learning it)? Do you just memorize the way you memorize multiplication tables?

you count by one and do it twice in your head or say it out loud, i.e., start with three then count/say four then five so you get 3 and 2 is 5.

i think that's how DS was doing it anyway.

Ha. My husband learned to add and subtract with this method in the mid to late 80s (it was the South), and he still has a terrible time doing math because of it. PP was right - after a point you just have to memorize the facts of basic addition and subtraction: 2+3=5, etc., otherwise you have to go through this ridiculous process. He is generally in awe tht I can do basic math in my head, and I am so not mathematically inclined.

Teacher here. We only use TouchMath with our some of our special education students who need multi-sensory techniques for addition and subtraction. Here is the website for more info and products: http://www.touchmath.com/ For general ed students, we use number lines, tally marks and other strategies. In second grade, they start getting timed fact quizzes so they do need to start memorizing addition and subtracting facts.

I don't get it. If you don't count something (dots, apples, whatever), how would you know that 3 + 2 = 5 (when you are first learning it)? Do you just memorize the way you memorize multiplication tables?

I didn't learn math in the US. We used number lines in early elementary for simple arithmetic on numbers less than ten--and by later elementary I think we'd just memorized all the combinations. But I don't remember "officially" rote learning the combinations like we did with multiplication tables. I think we just did the calculations enough times and in enough contexts that they got memorized.

How long was it tought for? It looks a lot like how I learned, too. I still touch all the dots with my pen whenever I add. I didn't use it for subtraction though. I was born in '85.