My wife homeschools, and the math curriculum she uses uses a very similar method from the beginning.
My daughter knows "12" as "One-ten two" and "33" as "three-ten three" and says it that way. She also knows those mean twelve and thirty-three, but for the purposes of the math program she uses the place terminology.
We can only hope that it will give her a better understanding of what's going on than pure memorization, and the jury's out until she's older, but it's a fascinating way to teach.
I sometimes wish we were all born with eight or sixteen fingers, but that's just the CS/EE bias in me talking.
I'm very very interested in considering homeschooling. How did the article's method differ with your child, since the "class size" is reduced to one? Your child won't have the benefit of being "filled in", but maybe she feels that she owns 100% of the achievement?
By the way, "one-ten-two" and "three-ten-thee" is literally how the Chinese would pronounce their numbers (一十二，三十三）. In a way I think it's helped me understand place values earlier.
The Socratic method can be frustrating with one child, because when she doesn't get it, she really doesn't get it, and it takes a lot of questioning to lead her down the right path again. Sometimes you just want to bang your head against the wall when you ask the simplest leading question and she gets it wrong. At least with a group most of the kids will get those questions right.
I think my wife and I use that teaching method quite naturally. I'm never inclined to just give our children the answer; they only learn when they arrive at the answer themselves.
Teaching my then 4yo the decimal system I dropped in some binary, in a similar way to this class - except for him we called it "robot language". He knew it from watching a few (PG!) episodes of Futurama. Hey, if Bender talks it then it's cool and that's enough to spark some interest.
I try to get him to interpret 12 as "one ten and two ones" or "one ten and two more" and say then they we just call it 12. In the same way 1100 in robot language is "one 8, one 4 and 0 twos and 0 ones".
When I'm president of the world number-names are up for reform!
Comments
This is wonderful.
My wife homeschools, and the math curriculum she uses uses a very similar method from the beginning.
My daughter knows "12" as "One-ten two" and "33" as "three-ten three" and says it that way. She also knows those mean twelve and thirty-three, but for the purposes of the math program she uses the place terminology.
We can only hope that it will give her a better understanding of what's going on than pure memorization, and the jury's out until she's older, but it's a fascinating way to teach.
I sometimes wish we were all born with eight or sixteen fingers, but that's just the CS/EE bias in me talking.
I'm very very interested in considering homeschooling. How did the article's method differ with your child, since the "class size" is reduced to one? Your child won't have the benefit of being "filled in", but maybe she feels that she owns 100% of the achievement?
By the way, "one-ten-two" and "three-ten-thee" is literally how the Chinese would pronounce their numbers (一十二，三十三）. In a way I think it's helped me understand place values earlier.
The Socratic method can be frustrating with one child, because when she doesn't get it, she really doesn't get it, and it takes a lot of questioning to lead her down the right path again. Sometimes you just want to bang your head against the wall when you ask the simplest leading question and she gets it wrong. At least with a group most of the kids will get those questions right.
I think my wife and I use that teaching method quite naturally. I'm never inclined to just give our children the answer; they only learn when they arrive at the answer themselves.
IMO English language gets in the way a lot here.
Teaching my then 4yo the decimal system I dropped in some binary, in a similar way to this class - except for him we called it "robot language". He knew it from watching a few (PG!) episodes of Futurama. Hey, if Bender talks it then it's cool and that's enough to spark some interest.
I try to get him to interpret 12 as "one ten and two ones" or "one ten and two more" and say then they we just call it 12. In the same way 1100 in robot language is "one 8, one 4 and 0 twos and 0 ones".
When I'm president of the world number-names are up for reform!