to think that number bonds epitomise everything that is wrong with the UK approach to education?

[IceBeing]

For the uninitiated, number bonds are groups of numbers that form additions. Eg. The number bonds for 10 are 1-9, 2-8 3-7 etc.

If you understand what addition / subtraction are, then clearly you don't need number bonds. They are a means to get kids to give the right answers by rote to questions they presumably don't understand yet.

This leads on smoothly to learning times tables by rote as a substitute for having any idea what multiplication is, learning the grid method for multiplying multi-digit numbers...learning by rote to rearrange algebraic expressions.....learning to factorize quadratic equations by rote...learning to manipulate vectors by rote...

Then at the end of this I have physics undergraduates telling me they don't like exams where you have to work things out, they prefer questions where you just repeat the right facts.

But it all starts with number bonds.

AIBU to think it matters a hell of a lot more that kids understand how numbers work, what addition and multiplication mean, than that they can give a nice clear confident, and above all, quick answer to a list of approved questions?

AIBU to think the best thing you can do for a kid that doesn't 'get' addition yet, is wait until they are bit older and try again, and that the very worst thing you can do is replace understanding with a rule set to learn?

I'm now very worried about Pete's sheep. He seems to be a very incompetent shephere, Lougle!

Or even shepherd. Sigh.

I'm a primary school teacher and would never try to teach number bonds to a child who doesn't yet understand the concept of addition, and I don't believe that any of my colleagues would either. Once the understanding of addition is secure, number bonds are a very useful tool for helping children to choose the best and most efficient method for solving a number problem. Therefore I think YABVU in the assumptions you are making about how maths is taught to very young children.

To me it is like learning a language. You do have to understand structure and meaning, but there is always some rote learning of basic stuff involved.

So for example, rote-learning personal pronouns, and rote-learning past participles, first the rules and then all the exceptions. That gives you a basic groundwork on which to construct your further learning of the language, because you'd never attain fluency without just being able to recall some things at will e.g. the past participle of 'avoir' or 'werden' or any modal verb.

I never formally learnt number bonds with that name, but I clearly do know them and use them daily.
What really helped me get it was in Mrs L's class - we had coloured sticks which ranged in length from 1cm to 10cm, so you could line up a 7 and a 3 next to a 10 and really see the relationship. Later, we did the same for multiplication, and again, I could see that 5 lots of 2 were the same as 1 lot of 10.

Just learning by rote wouldn't have given me that same understanding - and I believe that it is worth learning some things by rote, including times tables and verb tables. But it shouldn't be done in isolation - it was by playing around with the sticks that made me understand the patterns, and then I understand what it is that I am learning by rote.

(I also grew up on a farm, and I must say that Pete seems pretty blasé about all the sheep which are gone. Shouldn't he be running around, trying to find the hole in the fence, or phoning the police about the sheep rustling that's going on? It's all very well being able to count them, but he's not doing anything with the knowledge...)

Erm, please don't assume that all education in the UK is the same. The Welsh "foundation phase" is radically different to early years education in England.

I think number bonds, times tables etc are all good things as long as a child is ready to learn them and also learns the reasoning behind them. So not just learnt by rote but practising making 10 in different ways using practical resources like cubes, Numicon etc. Starting with multiplication as repeated addition etc.

This is how I was teaching yr 1 maths previously. The new curriculum is much more back to rote learning without effective understanding to underpin the concepts. And harder concepts have been pushed down further with less time to make sure all the children have understood them.

Number bonds are fine.

You cut strips of paper ten squares long - and then cut each strip again somewhere - and there you have number bonds. It's not learning by rote any more than any addition is rote learning.

Then you use it as a strategy for adding two digit numbers. Say 26+38 would be split as 26+4+34 = 30+34 - which is a much easier sum.

Bearhug, it's easy to spot the two Archers fans on this thread!

I found number bonds boggling and utterly useless - but then I learned addition and subtraction via an abacus and wondered why anyone would bother actually writing down pairs of numbers when you can whizz beads about.

I hate the way maths is taught now, luckily DD doesn't struggle with it and her teacher shows them lots of different methods for everything.

I am not so fussed about any one strategy that is used for any calculation. I teach 16 - 19 year olds. Yes, for the last 2 years I have been the nasty bitch torturing kids who can't count, spell, punctuate etc....

My problem is when any 1 child is taught seventy-eleven strategies of one calculation. take division: I was taught short and long division and, when caught without a calculator, can sit down and work out any set of numbers (glass of wine and a fair wind required).

But I teach kids who have been taught: the box, the columns, that diagonal thing, the bus stop, something about grasshoppers, add it on at the right/left/top/bottom, and a whole heap of other versions... and guess what? They can describe the strategy, draw it, put numbers into it.... and have no idea how to get an answer out again!

Worse... they are so used to not understanding but just 'doing' they can't check their answers. So are likely to agree that sharing a pizza that costs £12 between 6 people means they will be paying £4 each - actually that is not fair, they will normally divide 6 by 12 and look askance at the calculator!

And don't get me started on spelling.... we run a diagnostic test on every student. And those that fucking phonics screw up are really noticeable... "Spell binoculars" the voice says... bin o kew lahs they spell. Or kess tra is a common one too!

One boy this year, really smart, proactive, desperate to learn, no dyslexia or other measurable issues... has been with me for an hour a week, just looking at words and how to spell the new words he comes across. He has said that he feels he was taught a different language at school, phonetics, and then no one gave him the translation when they expected him to change to real English. He is much better now, but I have to wonder how much damage has been done to his confidence and expectations... let alone his actual ability.

So no, NU, not at all. For a sizable proportion of kids the current teaching of maths and English is not fit for purpose.

Stats, government ones: At 16 45% of all students will not have achieved grade C at GCSE in English and/or maths. At he end of their FE/Sixth Form, only 10% of those students will have achieved a grade C.

So why the fuck have the Goviots rammed GCSEs into 16-19 year old provision? Why did they ignore the requests of teachers, employers etc and just make Key Skills/Functional Skills more robust?

Sorry... off on a rant there!

Farmer Pete simply made sacrifices for the sake of children's learning .

The sheep did not get lost in vain.

nomama had to laugh at grasshoppers....

It think people believe that learning number bonds or grasshopper related methods of doing long division somehow help kids to understand the principles behind the methods....but I strongly disagree.

I think if you teach people rules sets then they just learn the rules set. They don't look behind it and they can't adapt it to new scenarios.

We see this all the time with our undergrads. Ask them to calculate the dot product of two vectors each with two elements and they rattle it off. Ask them to do it for two four vectors and they look at you like you asked them to pull a rabbit out of a hat. Ask them what a vector is...or worse still what a vector operator is and they blank completely.

They have been taught a so many processes that they have forgotten even to consider where the process comes from or what any of it means.

hiccupgirl I totally agree. Number bonds are not in themselves evil, but when they are used as a replacement for understanding then the problems begin.

I have a colleague whose DS has totally disengaged from the idea of maths requiring understanding and is on a mission to memorize all of the 'rules'. Very sad.

Nomama, that was a beautiful rant and I wholeheartedly agree.

We ask our physics undergrad students "what does learning mean to you"

A depressing number of them respond "collecting information and making sure I can recall it well"

The real problem with teaching people rule sets is that it informs their entire opinion of what learning is. It is much harder to well at higher levels if you believe learning is about memorizing facts than if you believe it is about understanding things for yourself.

Based on some of the views here, I feel like I'm missing some critical part of the number bond discussion.

The physics students aren't reflecting the value of maths though. They've just done A levels, which are largely about recalling facts. I'm taking an A level in Chemistry and looking at the specification, it says "state that...." "recall that...." "explain that....." "draw the mechanism for....." The mark scheme, similarly, says "allow x y z" "Ignore reference to x y z" "Disallow a, b, c" - to pass well you have to be able to not only memorise chunks of information, but memorise them and spit them out in a set fashion. There is no intelligent reasoning or argument needed.

That is why they want what has been drummed into them for the last two years to continue, not because they'd been taught number bonds at the age of 5!

Oh yes, set rules... or "Just give me the answer so I can write it down".

What happened to thinking... synthesising new thoughts... discovering a new thing (even if thousands of people have discovered it before)?

I feel so sorry for todays kids... they don't seem to have much love or joy in learning in anything! I don't understand that as if I ever win the pools/lottery I will go back to Uni forever

The whole reason I did maths and physics at uni was that you DIDNT have to memorise for exams. You just went in with your brain and understanding and did all the work in real time in the exam. I loved that.

Icebeing and Nomama I agree with you - we are losing the love of learning because it is interesting and enjoyable, and turning it into "learning for the sake of passing exams".

I would love to have been able to say my daughter could count to 10 before she was two, but she couldn't. She could recite the words from one to ten, but had no idea of the concept behind the words. If I had asked her to give me two sweets, or five sweets, she would not have known what the word actually meant. That is the difference between learning by rote and actual learning. It is handy to have the times-table memorised, but it would be useless without an actual understanding of what the numbers were actually doing.

(I came from scottish highers and csys in the early 90s)

I think they can help understanding if taught well and they understand why seven needs a three to make ten etc

Numicon is great as it gives a concrete image, we used it loads to do number bonds.

I think YABU to be honest. I think schools are trying to show lots of different ways of working with numbers so that children get lots of different ways to approach problems. They start off with number lines and number squares so seeing visually how numbers relate to each other and then move onto number bonds so get to learn some useful pairs that tend to be useful - then when they come to a point where they need to add up 23 and 37 they might visualise it on the number square and move up and down the tens and along the units or they might strip it down into number bonds. Or any one of loads of different methods.

I recognise what nomama says about children knowing all the different strategies and actually not being able to use any one of them consistently. That happened to my daughter this year who had absorbed one method and then got taught another and this confused her and caused both methods to fall straight out of her head! On the other hand, with the right reinforcement, she'll be able to use both methods and see numbers in the round and see various ways to solve problems.

So I think the issue is reinforcement rather than the strategies themselves.