In an attempt at a 'practical English' lesson the other day we talked about how to say 'math sentences' e.g. "124+235=359" When I tried to figure out the sum in class by stacking the numbers and doing 'long addition' my 8-year old Chinese students yelled at me. "That takes too long!" I asked confusedly how they would suggest I speed up. They wrote out the numbers horizontally, instructing on how to add from left to right, albeit in broken English: "Add the number 3 numbers first..."
I fee like I have a veil lifted: working from left to right, rather than right to left, and with the sums displayed horizontally is actually waaay faster. Why don't we learn math this way in US elementary school??
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment