Year 2 teacher had to be corrected on pronunciation of Pepys

[CheshireSplat]

Interested to hear opinions on this.

DD's class are doing the great fire of London and their teacher was talking about the diary of Samuel "Peppis". DD's friend told him it was Peeps in the inimitable style of a 6 year old.

Should I be worried. New teacher to the school. I don't tend to interfere but I would've thought that was pretty general knowledge.

Then when he gave them times tables he did 2 x 1, 2 x 2, 2 x 3 etc which is the wrong way round.....

Happy to be told to wind my neck in!

Ime in Ireland both methods are taught, no clear expectation to teach one way over another. But in case we'd ensure that kids knew multiplication is commutative.

The pronunciation thing is another matter. I think it's good for kids to see adults making mistakes anyway, it's a learning moment (everyone makes mistakes etc) if discussed in class.

How is multiplication not repeated addition? In my (Irish) maths text book it's introduced as exactly that, and as 'groups of'.

I worked with a teacher once that taught that 'three' and 'free' were a homophone She couldn't pronounce her 'th' at the start of words, and she argued with me that she was right. But, I am a pedant, and that incident alone didn't make her a bad teacher, she got great results from her students, despite it.

Yes, of course I was kidding. But everything seems to be a safeguarding issue now on MN so I'm not astonished to have been taken seriously.

catkind I agree that multiplication by a natural number is the same as repeated addition. However, unlike you, people never include the phrase ‘by a natural number’.

In the context of counting numbers then yes multiplication can be seen as repeated additions. However, it becomes inconsistent and on shaky ground once decimal and fraction multiplication is introduced. Also how do you explain that a negative number multiplies a negative number gives you a positive numbers. What is being repeated here and how many times?

It is still debatable if multiplication should be taught as repeated additions or scaling. I am kind of in two minds about this. However, I taught my DD that multiplication is scaling using geometry instead of counting objects. I will have to wait a few years before seeing the result of this approach.

I understand why primary school teachers would introduce multiplication as repeated additions. It is easy for students to understand. It is like when kids are taught that they can’t square root a negative numbers. I don’t have a problem if teachers don’t tell the kids everything as difficult concepts can’t be explained fully at certain time but then they should be careful with what they say.

Wow, GHGN, I think it's a bit too far fetched concept for lower, maybe even upper primary children to understand what you say.
Some mathematical children may get it. I don't even know how my ds learned multiplication since I didn't teach him, and he already new when started school, and certainly knows you can square root negative numbers, but I think it's very rare for primary children to understand to that level.

Scaling? As in scaling lengths? Isn't that just repeated addition presented on a numberline?
At this stage of primary, natural numbers is all they know, they are learning the fundamentals, exactly the same fundamentals that the operation of multiplication in integers and rationals and reals is built up from.

I live in a high-performing-maths country, and I can tell you that multiplication for young children here is presented with examples based on plates of cakes or bags of sweets, not having conversations about graphs and scaling.

Which is just as well, since we are talking about 7yo kids who still have to reminded not to pick their noses and eat the snot during lessons. Since these kids manage to do very well on their TIMSS and PISA scores at ages 14 and 15, I am assuming that the cakes/plates stuff does not cause lasting damage to their mathematical comprehension.

I never learned about The Great Fire apart from 'there was once a big fire in London, which killed lots of people' which to me seems to explain the national deep-seated concern for fire safety. It was such a traumatic event that it went deep into the nation's subconscious and forms part of what 'being English' means.
DS didn't learn about it either - the cohort ahead of his did it in Y2, the cohort behind him in Y1, but somehow his cohort missed out.
So when I was helping out in Y1 I had no clue about Samual Pepys let alone how his name should be pronounced. It doesn't look like a tricky one so wouldn't have occurred to me to look up. The Y1 kids corrected me and I was astounded ;)

Re the maths, I'm continental European and we learned it 1x2, 2x2, 3x2 etc EXCEPT that we didn't really do any rote learning of tables. We did learn the multiplication facts, but not in 'tables' where you chant the multiplications in a specific order.

DS here in England was taught with arrays, where it is crystal clear that 3 rows of 4 (colums) is exactly the same (it is the exact same graphic/image and everything) as 4 columns of 3 (rows). So inversely, when you read 3x4 then the three can stand for rows or for columns, and the 4 vice versa. Saying that 3x4 must be 3 rows of 4, and that interpreting 3x4 as 3 columns of 4 would be wrong, has nothing to do with maths, is not even a linguistic question, but is purely cultural.

Just last night I came across an indication that it is still 'English' to say 3x4 is 3, 'timesed by 4', so 3+3+3+3. I was watching a video aimed at parents, explaining how multiplication is taught in schools at KS2, by Pearson (Abacus). Far from 3x4 being three lots of 4, it was explained as very important that x4 is understood as the 'x4 machine'. You can put any number through the 'x4' machine. Each number you put through the machine gets 'timesed' by 4. You can then also put it through from the other end to get the inverse operation.

When you're coming from 'clever counting' (e.g. counting in fours), and interpret 3x4 as three lots of four, then it would seem intuitive to go 1x4, 2x4, 3x4 and counterintuitive to go 4x1, 4x2, 4x3.

But when you're coming from 'clever counting' and interpret 3x4 as three, through the x4 machine, then it makes sense to go 4, through the x1 machine, 4 through the x2 machine, 4 through the x3 machine, ...

But as soon as you leave the 'clever counting' behind, then it seems intuitive again to go 1 through the x4 machine, 2 through the x4 machine, ... so 1x4, 2x4, 3x4...

So I would say that the 'x machine' lends itself to both ways, doing 4x1, 4x2, 4x3 if we are looking at what happens to 4 as it goes through bigger x-machines/gets multiplied by bigger and bigger numbers, OR 1x4, 2x4, 3x4 if we are looking at what happens to various numbers as they go through the x4 machine.

Wow, not another one of these threads. What are you realistically wanting to do about this, OP?

What would that letter to the head look like: based on the second hand reports of my six year old, who I’ve been encouraging to look out for mistakes on the part of the teacher, I have grave concerns that Miss X is not up to the job. Please e-mail me a full list of her qualifications and a short personal statement about her suitability to teach Yr2.

That’s thread 11 this week of pointless, vexatious moans about teachers. There is no trust left.

irvineoneohone DD has been taught an alternative curriculum. She learns Maths from solving problems instead of learning concepts. Multiplication by Scaling comes naturally.

Kokeshi I was born in one of these ‘high performing countries’, went through the whole system, learning whatever fashionable things that they have in England nowaday like the bar method, mastery curriculum etc more than 30 years ago. Just because they always do it that way, it doesn’t mean there isn’t an alternative approach or view and they might be correct or even better. There was a similar discussion like this on the TES Maths forum, the one for Maths teachers, and a lot of teachers agree with this view, alongside a lot of disagreement as well. So it is not as clear cut as you might think it is from your experience.

GHGN, that actually sounds awesome.

ghgn, there are various different ways to teach it, there's a really interesting discussion to be had about which to use first. I think ultimately it's best if children have more than one way to understand and visualise multiplication as different ways lend themselves to different purposes. But different teachers use different interpretations as a starting point, as has been seen on this thread, and it's not incorrect to do so.

To remind you what you said, I was disagreeing with this:
Just because 2x3 = 3x2 does not mean they are both correct.
The confusion is often caused by people's misunderstanding that multiplication is repeated addition. It isn’t.

It is not incorrect to do it either way round. It is not a misunderstanding to see multiplication as repeated addition, it is how the operation of multiplication is defined. At least, I don't remember my mathematical logic course that clearly, but I am pretty sure you can't set up a concept of scaling properly without having a concept of multiplication in place first.

Not going to comment on the multiplication but I will comment on the pronunciation. I am a chemist who mispronounced phenolphthalein all my childhood and most of my adult life. I'm not sure why except I didn't go to school in the UK so maybe that's why. I sound super English, teach in English and in many ways am English - most people only know I'm not because of my name and even that confuses them.

I will say though that when I read Harry Potter I kept reading Hermione as Err-me-O-ni which is technically it's "correct" pronunciation - given it's a Greek name. When I saw the first film it took me a little while to work out who this Her-MY-o-ni chick was. My point is some of us do read as it's written - I don't think that should be held against anyone. I happen to think that Hermione is mispronounced in the films. As are lots of other names when people say them in English. I think it's a shame to discount someone because they pronounce something as it's written.

Haven't read the whole thread, so apogies if I'm repeating.
As far as multiplication is concerned, I teach 2x1, 2x2, 2x3 etc. The language I use is "2, 1 time; 2, 2 times; 2, 3 times etc".

Just read the whole thread. The teacher is quite right teaching multiplication that way round. The 2 is the multiplicand and the next number is the multiplyer with the answer being the product.
Over the years my school have had various maths experts in to train us and all have taught it that way. 2 x1 2x2 etc

Sometimes parents do not know everything just because they were taught it differently.

I'm clearly an ignoramus also.

Fwiw I once head (read? - and that in itself is significant!) - that you shouldn't judge the mispronounciation of a word because it means the person knows the context for the word in question - and has learned it via the medium of print. That is nothing to he ashamed of - unless you damn those who read.