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Are all kids capable of mental math?


Mommy22alyns
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I know a certain amount is basic, required, necessary, like single digit operations. What about adding or subtracting 2 and 3 digit numbers mentally, and even more difficult things? Are all (typically developing) kids capable of learning this, or does it start to get into "mathy" and "not mathy" territory?

 

Just musing as Becca and I trudge through RS C....

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Based on my own experience. I will say that All typically developing kids are capable of this. I see no reason why they wouldn't be. If I can do it, I firmly believe that anyone without mental handicap can.

 

:iagree: I was just reading The Core, and DH and I were shocked at how much less we (as a society) expect from schoolchildren than they did even 100 years ago, before the advent of calculators! It's amazing what they could do, in their heads, without pen and paper, at a young age. I think a good part of that is that we don't require memorization of the tables like we used to. It's easier to do math in your head, if you have a good part of the basic tables memorized. That's definitely where I'm starting over with my kids... drilling those tables in one by one. :D

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:bigear: to opinions.... my ds can do basic 1 and some 2 digit mental math, but now that we're onto three digit...he just can't see the connection yet. I'm not sure whether to 'push' it or to give it another year as it's certainly likely to come up again. We use MM, we're in 2B chapter 8.

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I know a certain amount is basic, required, necessary, like single digit operations. What about adding or subtracting 2 and 3 digit numbers mentally, and even more difficult things? Are all (typically developing) kids capable of learning this, or does it start to get into "mathy" and "not mathy" territory?

 

 

It takes some time and work and experience to pick the easiest strategy...but yes, any typically developing child can learn this sort of thing given a teacher who will put in the effort to teach them.

 

Bill

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I think it is one of those "time on task" things. The more you do it, and the more you encounter the task in various situations, the better you get at it. I do think some folks are better at it than others, but I don't think of it as the same thing as being "mathy". I would not expect, say, a 5th grader to have mastered it, as they haven't experienced anywhere as many different situations/problems as they will have by the time they are a few years older. (Though I would expect them to be able to at least attempt it.)

 

For me, this is one of those things that is similar to learning dance. The more you do a particular step, the more you come at it from different directions and in different configurations, the more you begin to "own" it. There is no substitute for practice, and I would argue no substitute for practice in various contexts. That is, you can try to, say, divide 64 by 4 over and over again to learn it, but it also helps to divide 63 by 4 and 65 by 4 and to reduce 64/4 and 40/640 and to skip count by 4's and to multiply 4 x 16 and to multiply 2 x 32 and so on and so on.

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It takes some time and work and experience to pick the easiest strategy...but yes, any typically developing child can learn this sort of thing given a teacher who will put in the effort to teach them.

 

:iagree: I think this is it.

 

I knew my multiplication facts inside and out, but I always wondered how they did those huge mental math problems in Little House on the Prairie. Problem was, I had never been taught anything other than the standard algorithm and was trying to draw that in my head and solve it -- no manipulation, composing, or decomposing of numbers. Now that I have spent quite a bit of time researching how to teach math to my kids I am much better at mental math -- and pretty ticked off that no one ever bothered to teach me the easy way :glare:

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:iagree: I think this is it.

 

I knew my multiplication facts inside and out, but I always wondered how they did those huge mental math problems in Little House on the Prairie. Problem was, I had never been taught anything other than the standard algorithm and was trying to draw that in my head and solve it -- no manipulation, composing, or decomposing of numbers. Now that I have spent quite a bit of time researching how to teach math to my kids I am much better at mental math -- and pretty ticked off that no one ever bothered to teach me the easy way :glare:

:iagree::iagree::iagree:

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My ds8 is not a mathy kid. He has some learning difficulties as well. He is able to do mental math. It took a loooooong time for him to pick up on it, and it takes frequent reinforcement to keep the concepts accessible in his brain, but he can do it. He's a bright little guy in many respects but he does struggle somewhat with various issues (both in school and globally).

 

My take on it is that a kid who can't (using your example of the mental subtraction of two- and three-digit numbers) is that the child either doesn't have a solid grasp of place value or the child just isn't able yet to keep that much information in her head and manipulate it at the same time.

 

The book Why Don't Students Like School by Daniel Willingham actually explains a lot about working memory.

 

I will say that the switch from RS at the end of B to MM2A has been helpful for my son in cementing his mental math abilities. There are a lot more practice problems (I used supplemental worksheets from worksheetworks.com when we used RS), and when he learned the paper and pencil algorithm for subtracting two-digit numbers using trading (carrying), I had him do each problem both mentally and on paper and compare his answers.

 

Another idea that may or may not have any merit is that I require extensive memory work from my kids. We mostly focus on poetry but we also memorize things from science, history, grammar, etc. *I* believe that extensive memory work aids in the development of working memory. And my kids have an impressive array of memorized poems to boot! :)

 

Tara

Edited by TaraTheLiberator
typo
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