Much of math, and especially computation, is about learning a process or a set of procedures. [I am assuming you are practical enough to know that we cannot expect elementary aged children to re-discover all of mathematics on their own, as some people recommend.]<\/em><\/p>\n Learning a procedure means knowing “What’s next?”\u00a0<\/strong> If you ever learned a procedure (for example a recipe) you know that it is between steps, when you ask yourself, “What’s next?” that you need help from the written recipe.\u00a0 Students are no different.\u00a0 Just showing them what to do is usually not enough for them to be able to follow in your footsteps.\u00a0 You need to teach them the steps of the procedure.\u00a0 As with anything you teach, you are going to confuse your students if you do things in a different order, or with different words, or different steps.\u00a0 What you call things, and some of how you explain yourself, and some of the sequence of doing the procedure is arbitrary.\u00a0 If you are improvising you will do things differently each time and your students will be confused.\u00a0 At a minimum you need\u00a0 it written down.<\/p>\n We know a lot about how to help students learn a procedure.\u00a0 We know we need to consistently follow the same set of steps in the same order, until students have learned it.\u00a0 We know we need to explicitly tell students the decisions they must make while working so they know what to do and when, in other words, we have to make our thinking process overt.\u00a0 We know we need to be consistent in our language of instruction so that students benefit from repetition of examples.\u00a0 And finally, we know we need to careful in our selection of problems so that we demonstrate with appropriate examples how the new process works and where it does not work.<\/p>\n Guess what?\u00a0<\/strong> <\/span>You can’t do all of that when you are improvising your instruction and making up the directions on the fly.\u00a0To be able to do all that, you need a script and pre-selected examples.\u00a0 Many teachers have been taught to use a chart of steps, posted in their classroom, to which they refer as they model a procedure.\u00a0 The same effect can be achieved with a script, so that the teacher uses the same wording along with the same steps in the same order.\u00a0 If you improvise, it won’t always be the same, which will confuse your students.<\/p>\n You have to learn when and how to make decisions.<\/strong>\u00a0 Every math procedure involves looking at the situation and making decisions about what and how to do what needs to be done.\u00a0 You have to know what operation to use, when to borrow, when to carry, where to write each digit and so on.\u00a0 Because you as the teacher already know how to do the procedure, it is tricky to remember to explain your thinking.<\/p>\n Good teaching involves first explaining your decision-making and then giving your students practice in making the right decision in the given circumstances and finally to make them explain why–using the rule you used in the first place.\u00a0 \u00a0First, you teach something like, “Bigger bottom borrows” to help students decide when to borrow.\u00a0 Then you prompt them to explain how they know whether or not to borrow.\u00a0 All of that should be asked and answered in the right place and at the right time.\u00a0 A script or a posted process chart will help you remember all the decisions that have to be made, and what to look at to make the right one.\u00a0 Without a script it is very unlikely that you will remember the exact wording each time.\u00a0 You need a script to be able to deliver consistent language of instruction.<\/p>\n With some math procedures it is quite hard to choose the right examples.\u00a0 The fine points can be obscured when the examples the teacher happens to come up with, are not quite right.\u00a0 The examples may be an exception or handled differently in a way the procedure has not taught.\u00a0 So for example borrowing across a zero is different than across other numerals so the numbers in a minuend must be chosen carefully rather than off the cuff.<\/p>\n Also, when teaching a procedure it is essential to teach when to use the procedure and when not to use that procedure.\u00a0 It is important that the teacher present “non-examples,” that is, problems in which you don’t follow that procedure.\u00a0 I have seen students who are taught, for example, borrowing, using only examples that need borrowing.\u00a0 Then they turn around and borrow in every problem–because that is what they were taught.\u00a0 They should have been taught with a few non-examples mixed in, that is, problems where borrowing wasn’t necessary so they learned correctly when to borrow as well as how to borrow.\u00a0 \u00a0Choosing teaching examples on the fly will often end up with more confusion rather than less.<\/p>\n If it bothers you to see students as frustrated as the one above, then find* or write out a script for teaching computation so that you can be consistent and effective.\u00a0 Trust me, your students will love you for it.<\/p>\n * You may want to look at the “Learning Computation” programs within the Rocket Math Universal subscription.\u00a0 Here are links to blogs on them:\u00a0 Addition<\/a>, Subtraction<\/a>, and Multiplication<\/a>.\u00a0 These are sensible, small steps, clearly and consistently scripted so each skill builds on the next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Improv can be entertaining, but it will frustrate students trying learn a procedure. Much of math, and especially computation, is about learning a process or a set of procedures. [I am assuming you are practical enough to know that we cannot expect elementary aged children to re-discover all of mathematics on their own, as some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":837,"featured_media":8283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0},"categories":[101],"tags":[35,37,43,122,119,45,38],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36160"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/837"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36160"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38492,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36160\/revisions\/38492"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Math teaching strategy: Use a script or a process chart to keep the instructions consistent.<\/h2>\n
Math teaching strategy: Teach a consistent rule for every decision students must make.<\/h2>\n
Math teaching strategy: Plan ahead to carefully choose the right examples.\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n