How do they teach kids Maths these days?

[TheWillowTree]

My dd and i got bored with 'literacy' so i started looking at sums - she has a 'workbook' she chose in Smiths but I must admit I cannot really understand what it is all about. They have number lines and don't even seem to teach about hundreds, tens, units etc and 'vertical' addition.

In the end I showed her it myself and she seemed to get it, but what on earth DO they teach them at school? I was definiitley doing 'vertical' addition at her age (Yr 1 - 5).

They do do vertical addition but maths these days is about teaching the kids different methods for calculating. Sometimes counting on a numberline is easier/ quicker than vertical addition.

They are also taught about place value (H, T, U etc)

How old is DD? Was there something specific you weren't sure about? If you search in the archives, there have been other threads about this recently with some helpful links to sites which explain more about how maths is taught.

I think they also do estimation before proper maths if thatmakes sense as this is they way we do numbers in real life.

I think it is implicit maths as dd is in receptiona nd i ahve not noticed her do any explicit numeracybarwork on a number line and talking about halves and quaters.

Yes twinsetandpearls is right, estimation, rounding & approximation is a big part of teaching maths too.

It is important because often kids will do, for example:

102
+329
-
1431

If they have rounded and approximated that 100 + 330 = 430, they'll realise that 1431 cannot be correct so they need to check their adding up.

Hope this makes sense!

In maths we teach addition in the following way:

Cubes in two groups put them together how many now?
Number lines jumping along in ones, the, two's then fives, then tens etc..

then on to partitioning. Adding the tens, then the units. 11+17 would become 10+10 then 1+7.

Only when they can do this would we introduce it vertically.

We would certainly not introduce vertical addition until year 2 as their knownledge of place value needs to be secure first or when it comes to carrying over in more difficult additions or borrowing in subtraction the child has no idea.

gping to post a link to a brill site which will explain it all

the foruth and fifth link on here will be particularly helpful to you

In short, it is two fold - understanding the maths behind what you are doing rather than learning a random method by rote and secondly, linking written methods in with work on mental calculation

Thanks popsycal - they look great. i understand about place value needing to be secure but i could not really understand about number lines, seems such a long wonded way of doing things!!

number lines help with mental calculations - a good way to help you visualise numbers and how they relate to each other in your head.