Teaching for Mastery of Multiplication
How else is there to teach students multiplication facts
besides the traditional memorization? In the article they promote teaching
students multiplication through contextual situations, so that students will improve
their computational skills. Just as we have learned about addition and
subtraction, students must have an understanding of what the “multiplication sign”
means and what it represents, so that they can develop strategies to solve
problems.
Very few students are able to memorize all of their multiplication
facts and then use them in a problem solving situation. This is why it is so important
for teachers to teach meaningful ways for students to understand and be able to
manipulate multiplication problems. The article suggest four steps to teaching
multiplication, “introducing the concepts through problem situations and
linking new concepts to prior knowledge, providing concrete experiences and
semi-concrete representation prior to purely symbolic notation, teaching rules explicitly,
and providing mixed practice” (Wallace and Gurganus, p 29). We must begin by
teaching students understand multiplication through real world problems, which
is the opposite approach from the traditional method of memorizing and then
looking at real world problems. It is important that students have opportunities
to use manipulatives to grasp the concept of what is taking place in a
multiplication problem. They must be taught the rule of 0 and 1 as well. The
most effective way to teach these rules are examples paired with strong teacher
language, for example the rule of the 1’s in multiplication. Last, teachers can
provide some mix drill practice to promote fluency.
We want to teach student to understand and not just
memorize. If we change our multiplication teaching and allow students
opportunities to develop understanding and “encourage them to use personal strategies
for learning the facts and developing automaticity” (Wallace and Gurganus , p
33) students will develop a positive attitude toward multiplication. A positive
attitude will in turn have an effective impact on their mathematics education.
Work Cited
Wallace, A. H.,
& Gurganus, S. P. (2005). Teaching for mastery of
multiplication. Teaching Children Mathematics, 12(1) 26 – 33.
Lindsey,
ReplyDeleteThis post was very meaningful to me. I am moving up to third grade this year, (from second,) and have been looking for ways to teach multiplication and what that may look like, the way we have been learning in this course. I really enjoyed reading this and I can envision how I may teach this concept next year. It is important to me that my students are understanding and not memorizing, as you said. I am looking forward to implementing this and giving my students that positive multiplication attitude!
Excellent post!