During early years of primary school, my teacher encouraged us to use count on strategies. We used our fingers to do the simple addition and subtraction. However, when it comes to bigger number (more than 10), my teacher taught us to use the number lines (1-20) and empty number lines (up to 100). These methods are more effective and efficient because the methods are easier, simple and we can get the correct answers immediately. Furthermore, my teacher also provided us with many Mathematics exercises and quizzes every day. The exercises and quizzes are purposely to develop our thinking skills and mental computation skills (as we have to use number lines to find the answers). Other than that, my teacher also taught us the written strategies whenever the mental strategies are inadequate or some of my classmates did not really understand how to use mental computation. Therefore, I was using both mental and written computation during my primary school years and I realized that both methods are applicable and useful to solve any Mathematics problem.
On the other hand, my teacher taught us some different strategies when learning multiplication and division. Firstly, my teacher used direct modeling strategies when teaching multiplication. He brought several objects and modeled the multiplication process. However, after learning and understanding the basic concept of multiplication, we have to memorize the multiplication from multiple of 2 until 12. However, learning division was slightly different from learning multiplication where we didn’t have to memorize the division, but he taught us the sets or regroup strategies of division where he brought real objects to the classroom and demonstrated the division process.
In conclusion, I realized that using these mental and written computation strategies are very important as the basic knowledge of Mathematics in order for me to solve many complicated Mathematics problems in the future.
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