In today's worksheet based school culture, it seems to me that new-age schools have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
In the yesteryear, math. was taught to children in special "math." notebooks that had pages filled with squares, with each cell meant to hold one digit. That meant a child who was doing (say) long form multiplication (such as 327 * 48) could clearly see how the tens and units of the numbers stacked up. The implication of the "0" placed before beginning multiplication with 4 was fairly obvious. It also helped in giving perspective of size such that the main number could me made to fill most of the cell, with the carry-over (if any) written as a small number on the top left of the cell.
Fast forward to the present day. Math. is now done on pre-printed worksheets where the calculation area is plain white space even for children as young as 7. This means that a child dividing 678 by 7 does not have the perspective that the dividend is actually 096. I have seen the 9 being written right above the 6 of 678, thus losing perceptive of the principles of division.
Another fallout of worksheet based schoolwork is the lack of space of young (and therefore large) handwriting. I have watched struggles over trying to fit answers in worksheets that are a mix of 4-lined, 3-lined, 2- lined and no-lined workspaces all provided over the same weekend. Handwriting that had been perfected in the Montessori world is now a confused mess due to the varying size and nature of the writing area provided by worksheets.
Of course, there are people who argue that handwriting isn't important in today's day and age, but, I don't see why we can't help our children to write well. And surely nobody can argue that place value isn't an important math. concept, which a specialized book makes easy to grasp.
New age schools would do well to examine and work towards a solution to what is an easily-fixed problem.
In the yesteryear, math. was taught to children in special "math." notebooks that had pages filled with squares, with each cell meant to hold one digit. That meant a child who was doing (say) long form multiplication (such as 327 * 48) could clearly see how the tens and units of the numbers stacked up. The implication of the "0" placed before beginning multiplication with 4 was fairly obvious. It also helped in giving perspective of size such that the main number could me made to fill most of the cell, with the carry-over (if any) written as a small number on the top left of the cell.
Fast forward to the present day. Math. is now done on pre-printed worksheets where the calculation area is plain white space even for children as young as 7. This means that a child dividing 678 by 7 does not have the perspective that the dividend is actually 096. I have seen the 9 being written right above the 6 of 678, thus losing perceptive of the principles of division.
Another fallout of worksheet based schoolwork is the lack of space of young (and therefore large) handwriting. I have watched struggles over trying to fit answers in worksheets that are a mix of 4-lined, 3-lined, 2- lined and no-lined workspaces all provided over the same weekend. Handwriting that had been perfected in the Montessori world is now a confused mess due to the varying size and nature of the writing area provided by worksheets.
Of course, there are people who argue that handwriting isn't important in today's day and age, but, I don't see why we can't help our children to write well. And surely nobody can argue that place value isn't an important math. concept, which a specialized book makes easy to grasp.
New age schools would do well to examine and work towards a solution to what is an easily-fixed problem.
Yes, loose worksheets can be a pain.... especially when you need to use them for revising with kids. Regarding the space, in today's "keep everything short and sweet" culture - may be it's not a bad idea - children learn to write short...though not necessarily sweet answers (mind you this is the SMS generation).
ReplyDeleteThose maths books are still sold and are used in schools.... however downside with using these books are that children never seem to want to learn to write numbers clearly as long as these books are used (as I have seen with my kiddo), and they also struggle when they have to make quick calculations in normal papers. One way around is to use that "finger space rule" even for numbers (which I am using for my 11 year old now).