Year one maths

[Cortina]

Just been to a talk so we can help support DC's learning in year one.

It said that things are done on number lines horizontally these days and not vertically (traditional sum format). Teacher said that some parents have horribly confused children, who haven't yet got basics, by trying to teach them old vertical format.

Hopefully this will all become clearer as we go on .

Any thoughts?

[egypt]

I've just come back from one too and notice you posted this at 5am. Where in the world are you perchance?

I am an infant teacher. Yes, they do need to learn in a horizontal format. Vertical sums mean NOTHING to a young child. They can be taught to calculate like that by practise, but it doesn't mean anything; they don't know why sums work like that.

The maths strategy teaches them to learn how numbers are made up, so later they will learn that 14 is made of 10 and 4. In addition, they will learn to partition numbers in order to add them, for example, they will learn to calculate 25 + 14 by adding the tens 20 + 10 = 30 then the units 5 + 4 = 9

30+9=39

It seems long winded but is so so important for their little brains to learn what numbers are about. Don't teach the vertical method. They eventually progress to that in about Year 5!

[primarymum]

Yes, we're the same, number lines, number linesand more number lines! It's school policy ( I'm Maths leader!0 and I now it can confuse parents but egypt is quite right, children neeed to know WHY they are doing things and what numbers mean rather than just HOw to do it!

[Cortina]

Thanks to both of you. Do all schools teach like this now?

How things have changed since my day

It's true we were taught to apply a sort of formula blindly without knowing how 'numbers worked'. Maybe why I have maths anxiety now??

[egypt]

Yes all schools teach like this now. The National Numeracy came into place in around 1998/99.

[egypt]

Cortina, you're not in Singapore are you?