Fabulous new numeracy method.........................

[marymoocow]

.....has been announced at dc primary school.
We had a numeracy evening last night and ahead of the review of the numeracy strategy (or whatever it is) our school has found this fab way of teaching it.
Yes you've guessed it. Good old fashioned column method like we used to do .
Bit annoyed as i have been arguing the fact for the last 2 years, and ds has really been struggling, but at least we can officially help him now.

So why has my dc school which is a primary decided go back to the old method right from y1. Yes i agree they need a foundation for understanding numeracy, but children that are still in yr4 were not allowed to use any other method, even if proven that they didn't understand, or got lost in all the different steps.
Oh and for the record i wasn't suggesting anyone on here was a bad teacher, and i appologise if anyone thought that. It is not the teachers i have a complaint about, its the experimenting that keeps happening with our children while,whoever it is monitors, reviews after 10 years and then says, actually that didn't work.

Couldn't resist joining in on this one! I was sceptical too when my ds (now 10) first started school. Now he is Year 5 and I am really impressed with his confidence at mental arithmetic and his ability to explain workings and tackle hard mathematical questions. My father, who was a Secondary school Maths teacher many moons ago has told me that he had many students who didn't 'get' the old way that many of you seem to find so wonderful, and he used to get them to use the 'splitting down' method of the 'new Maths' which they found easier to understand. Maybe it's not such a 'new' method after all - and maybe, as others have pointed out here, different methods suit different children and - another maybe - sometimes the benefits of a particular method may not become clear, even for a clever child, for several years!

the present numeracy stategy hasn't been going as long as ten years. I was a teacher 10 years ago and it was certainly not what I taught. It was introduced a year after literacy hour as I was teaching in a different school where it was being trialed.

I'd like to defend the new methods - they teach kids to understand what they are doing which is far more important than speed. AND they teach children fantastic mental maths skills. I'm nearly 42, I was taught the old way and I was massively under confident about maths for years until I started work and had to virtually reteach myself. Ra Ra Ra for new mthods. Wish I'd learnt that way. Don't diss it until you see how it works!

I agree with homemama ...
That the newer methods are fantastic to teach to children new in school ... to get a thorough grounding and understanding of number value. I am amazed that my 7 year old DS can add up 46 + 32 in his head or 57 + 25 for example. There was NO way I could do that at 7. I still need a pen and paper for calculating anything ...
BUT - as they get older, once they have a firm understanding of the numbers they are dealing with, the old methods will help them work out harder calculations more quickly.
I managed to scrape by Maths at school by following the formulae, not having a single clue about what I was doing. The 'mathematicians' at school were the ones who understood what they were doing, not just getting the answers right IYSWIM?