New Orleans Learning

I'm currently in warm and sunny New Orleans for the NCTM National Conference. I spent today with a fellow teacher going to a variety of workshops, but found the last workshop of the day to be the most interesting and enjoyable. It focused on the importance of teaching students multiple methods for computations. 

With the shift to Common Core there has been some concerns about the way students are taught how to complete basic computations - like adding and subtracting. The Common Core focuses on students developing an understanding of these basic skills - I think this is great! Students are taught different methods, such as breaking numbers apart or drawing a model, to develop this understanding before being taught the standard algorithm. The workshop I attended today emphasized how these different methods relate to each other and how they can be used to explain the standard algorithm we all learned in school. 

Some time was spent during the workshop talking about how we would go about solving different problems. For example, the problem 24 x 6 was presented. My first thought was to multiply 20 x 6 = 120 and 4 x 6 = 24 and then add 120+24 and get the solution 144. Another person in the workshop explained that he multipled 25 x 6 = 150 and then subtracted 6 and got 144. There were other methods explained, but what was most interesting is that no one said "I took out paper and pencil and used the standard algorithm." 

In our day to day lives as adults we don't use the standard algorithms we were taught in school; we use number sense and mental math to find the answer. We need to teach our students how to be able to do this same thing. We need to help our students develop number sense so that they too can find the easiest way to complete computations in their heads. By teaching them multiple methods for these basic computations we are helping them to develop this number sense so that they can effectively and efficiently work with numbers in their heads.