So Many Strategies!

This past school year, I was sent to many math workshops (probably because it was my first year of teaching :) ), which allowed me to really see how math is taught at the elementary level. It is undoubtedly very different from when I was in school, where we learned the one usual method for addition or multiplication, and if you didn't understand that particular method, chances are you were not going to ace a math test.

I learned this year that math is now very differentiation orientated, which in my opinion is a fantastic thing. Not only did I learn 3 or 4 and sometimes 5 different ways to add, subtract, multiply or divide on paper, but I learned that it allows the students to pick the strategy that they understand the best. This allowed many students in my grade 5 class to succeed. If they did not understand the usual method for these concepts, there were other methods they could learn to be able to perform these simple operations. 

Although addition, subtraction, multiplication and division seem somewhat of an acquired concept for most grade 7 and 8 students, I found this to be a very important step because after all, these four operations are definitely one of the foundations of learning most other math strands. After learning these new strategies myself, I was able to teach them to the students, and most students managed to acquire at least one or two different strategies to perform these operations.

Although I'm sure many of you are familiar with these strategies, I'll just show an example of one of my favourites. Many of the strategies were also based on trial and error, which allowed students to work on their problem solving skills.

Here is a strategy that many students were able to master if they did not feel comfortable with the "usual" method of multiplication. I work in a French school so this method is called "L'aire du rectangle" (Loosely translated, and there is probably a definite name for it in English, I guess it would be called "The area of the rectangle" strategy).

ex. 13 X 355

This method works by decomposing the each factor of the multiplication and doing smaller or easier multiplications based on the the columns in the box (you multiply the row by the column, similar to coordinates or battleship). At the end you add up each column and the final number is the product of the multiplication.

It may be a lengthier method, but for students that don't understand other methods, this one worked very well. Again, by grade 7 and 8 we are hoping that most students are comfortable with the four operations and solving problems related to them. However, it never hurts to review the basics before getting into more complex mathematics where these "simpler" concepts are necessary.