MATH - Is about spotting patterns. Not learning Times Tables. Opine.

[HarrowToCroydon]

MATH - Maths is not about learning times tables, it’s about spotting patterns in everything we experience and using them to plan and invent.

From a 7 year old Guardian article,
Reckon you were born without a brain for maths? Highly unlikely | Students | The Guardian

Would you recount your experiences where you or your loved ones were traumatised by Math.

Clearly you didn’t learn much grammar either. What on earth do you mean?

I see.

"because I read voraciously", we too. I remember in the 1980's I met someone who was involved in Esperanto. I asked him "How do you learn English", he replied "Read Fiction". I still have that image of the exact place where I was standing and what he looked like when he gave this answer. I took his advice and things have worked out all right.

This. All this wanging on about teaching patterns have clearly never taught in a primary classroom. Yes teachers do show the patterns, get the kids to explore the patterns practically etc, however there comes a point when you just have to learn them. A bit of rote learning alongside hands on experience is just fine in my opinion.

You are right, I did not learn grammar. I simply "Read Fiction", as I posted above.

What I meant - Richer High Resource Children, aka the ones who have more toys, more books, go out more, are not necessarily better than poorer or "low ability children" as far as Math is concerned.

I've said on this thread already - I'm an example of 'organic' learning of times-tables - it doesn't work (the only one that comes instantly into my head is 6x for some reason)

Yes, rote learning can be boring, but I still remember squares up to 20, because my teacher would go round the class with each of us having to say the next number before we were allowed to leave. When I first learned to spell my name, it was by rote etc. But it's a tiny part of the lesson, and that little bit of rote goes a long way.

Even when I'm spelling my name to other people, I don't 'spell it' in my head - I just automatically churn out a 'word' that's the spelling IYSWIM. Just like my kids do with times tables.

What I meant - Richer High Resource Children, aka the ones who have more toys, more books, go out more, are not necessarily better than poorer or "low ability children" as far as Math is concerned.

I think you're reading a connection there that isn't - I was poor, but not low ability. Rich/high resource children aren't high ability - they just have less/more access to resources and help than each other.

How so? None of the subjects required anything more than basic adding/subtraction which is where fingers come in. Yes I still count on my fingers.

I struggled with maths, took 2 goes to get a C at GCSE, and then avoided maths all my life. I can't do my times tables. Now, because I have to do something for work, I decided I should get some help with maths. The thing that holds me back the most is not knowing my times tables. They are crucial. Not knowing them makes everything take much longer. Luckily, my teacher is giving me strategies to learn them at the grand old age of 50! My children did them at primary school. They are drilled into them. Without bothering to read the article, is this another pretentious Guardian piece of nonsense?

I think primary maths is now taught pretty well, I have been very impressed with all the white rose stuff my kids have done, and agree TT’s are essential. My very firmly able but not a super whizz DC left primary school doing lots of things I didn’t do until year 8 and I was in the top set.

Some degree of learning by rote is needed because having that recall is essential to be able to have a firm grasp as things move on.

that’s why the new things like TT rockstars are good for a lot of children because they don’t realise how much they are learning in recall and speed.

Of course they do
When did you last visit a classroom?

In fact they rote lean from Year 1 now in many schools.

Definitely! I knew one child who got a C in maths gcse who obviously had dyscalculia (sp?). He had to do all his calculations using written methods.

E.g he had to calculate 20 - (7x2) to solve a problem

So he worked it out by lots of adding:
2
4
6
8
10
12
14

Then did
20
14-

As a column subtraction.

Being able to do times tables or simple calculations mentally frees up loads of time for more complex tasks.

The only pattern I ever spotted was do maths, get maths wrong, get bollocked. Do maths, get maths wrong, get bollocked. Do maths, get maths wrong, get bollocked. Do maths…

Where I am, I feel the "low ability children" excel the "high resource richer children" well I had no idea what you were on about so I'm glad you clarified with; What I meant - Richer High Resource Children, aka the ones who have more toys, more books, go out more, are not necessarily better than poorer or "low ability children" as far as Math is concerned.
Anyway you are talking complete bullocks. Some children can't learn by rote and can't spot patterns. Therefore the difficulty with learning table (which I agree is the phonic equivalent to reading) is always going to put them at a disadvantage, when it comes to mathematics. As with everything to do with education, children are made to fit the mould and not the mould to fit the child, which means a number of children, particularly those who are ND, will never be able to maximise their full learning potential.

Tables

DD has dyslexia... one of her issues is learning stuff by rote. The first sign of it all was the sheer amount of effort it took her to learn to count to 10.... but she could put her toys into groups of the same size, make patterns etc but couldn't recite numbers. Times table were hell.

Shes turned out to be quite able at Maths, logic etc but her issues with some of the simple things like times tables does slow her down a lot. Fortunately in the real world she's able to use a calculator.

I was at Primary school in the early 70s. We definitely had to learn Times Tables, one each week, on our time and be tested on them in class.I still remember them, so rote learning must work for some people.

Me too. With the added joy of being told my "workings out" were wrong, despite the answer being right. If I didn't show how I had (eventually) worked something out that was also wrong.

Nothing wrong with rote learning, in my opinion. I never did it in Maths but did plenty in French (conjugating verbs etc), which helped me no end.

That happened to me a lot too. I'd get to the right answer but by a different method so teachers would mark me down, even though I laid out my workings (logic) clearly, just because I wasn't doing it the way they'd do it. No wonder so many people feel they're crap at it.

If anyone's interest, there's a brilliant book I'd suggest you read called "The Joy Of X" which includes a lot about patterns etc. My OH bought it for me as a joke, but I loved reading it!

As far as I recall from doing maths as a child in the 70s and 80s, there was a combination of rote learning (times tables, methods etc) and more intellectual bits involving pattern spotting etc. Most school subjects involve a combination of these different types of learning.

I disliked maths and just didn't find it interesting, but probably preferred the rote-learning of things like tables, because that was easy.. I found mathematical methods very hard to keep in my long-term memory.

Maths. Not math.

When teaching young adults who have doe 11 years of standard education, and cannot calculate Area or know what 3 squared is, I feel that times tables will serve them better.
However, maths is learned differently by different people, so it is definitely worth exploring what suits the individual. Not possible for a teacher with 30 in a class though.
We need to do better.

Glad it wasn't just me. I never understood the whole "show your workings" thing. Why did it matter if the answer was right?