Learn them now; avoid needing to unlearn them later.
Think back to your primary school days, sitting in your maths lessons. Can you remember particular catch phrases that were drilled into you as a child? Chances are, some of these catch phrases may ring a bell! Learn more about how the way children are taught maths has changed.
At the time, yes, they may pose to be useful for teachers and parents to use when helping children. However, as you’ll soon discover, these catch phrases which are intended to help your child, can in fact lead to misconceptions, causing unnecessary confusion later in life.
Multiplying by 10: “Just add a zero”
When teaching how to multiply by a power of 10, an all too common misconception is adding zeros on the end.
This may be a pattern for some values, however this misconception becomes very damaging when suddenly this rule doesn’t work correctly.
Column method subtraction: “3 subtract 5 we cannot do…”
Here’s another “rule” you might hear echoing from your schooling years. This is a common catch phrase often used when teaching the formal method of column subtraction, when a digit of the number to be subtracted is larger than its corresponding digit in the number it is subtracted from.
Stating that you cannot subtract a larger number from a smaller number is a false mathematical statement.
