Multiplying

No - I am not adding to the family, this is about Livi and her fear of maths.

I completely understand this fear. I felt it for years, starting around her age. It started for me, as it has with her, with multiplication.

Adding and subtracting is fine. Generally this is learnt, or at least the concept is learnt while children are pretty small and are naturally given jobs to do that include adding or subracting. We ask them to bring two more forks to the table and they count them and discover that there are now five. They eat a sweet and find they only have four left. We chat to them as they pootle through their day and with a bit of gentle un-noticed teaching they get the concepts.

Multiplication is different.

This is not introduced until the time that most mainstream schools have put away the manipulatives and are working in the abstract - something that happens heartbreakingly early in the UK. We are told by the teachers that they are learning through games and fun activities and so they are, at Livi's school. But that does not change the fact that there is nothing available to use to help work out te answers to these fun games. Either the child has already memorised the number facts necessary to succeed or they haven't. If they haven't then they have nothing to work out the answer with. In fact, it is seen as cheating.

In order to counteract this, and because Livi has consistantly worried about multiplication even before it has been introduced we have been "doing maths" every day this holiday. At Livi's request and only for as long as she is interested. Some days it has been seconds and others it has been almost an hour. It has been only the two times table and it has been very repetitive.

I do not have enough short bead stairs at home to be able to work on this concept as I would at school but we started off the same way.

We started with the golden beads and multiplying four digit numbers with no changing. This is so that Livi had the greatest possible chance of understanding that 1221 x 4 is the same as 1221 + 1221 + 1221 + 1221. Understanding that multiplication is the same as repeated addition is the most important thing.


This is not my picture.

After a few days Livi told me that this was all very well but that she would be "doing" the two times table when she got back to school so could we "do" that. So we did.


This is not my picture.

Instead of the short bead stairs we used unifix cubes. I find these are a great stand in for all sorts of Montessori materials if the materials are too expensive for home use, especially as I have no intention of home schooling. We put them together into pairs and lined them up (like soldiers, apparently). Liv already knows how to skip count in twos so I asked her to count the pairs in the quickest way she knew how. With a bit of prodding she got the idea and was able to move from simply skip counting them, to being able to tell me how many there were in a particular group.

At this point I became very careful about my language. I asked her to "take 3 groups" or to "take 3 lots of" two. This is because the word multiply means very little to a six/seven year old. It makes more sense to talk about three lots/groups of two. You can see it in front of you and hold the image in your head.

We did lots of this kind of work for a week. The, this week, Livi was very keen to use a new notebook and so we started to write down the work she was doing.

First we wrote it down in order - 1 x 2 = 2, 2 x 2 = 4 etc. As she wrote it we said together, 1 group of two equals 2, 2 groups of 2 equals 4 etc. It took a lot of repetition. In her book this is written out about five times. This is because when we returned to it the next day she could sort of remember it but not quite until she had had another presentation and then she wanted to do it again. Each day she needed less input from me and finally she brought me her book and she had done it without me knowing it was "maths time" and told me she wanted something a bit harder. All this time she was still using the soldiers to help her work out each answer. I think she could do it without but she wasn't ready to let go.

I asked her to bring the soldiers to her note book and wrote three questions out of order. 3 x 2 =, 5 x 2 = , 8 x 2 =.  She ended up doing a page of mixed questions and by the end of the page she was not using the soldiers any more. We did a few more days of this, and each day she became more confident.

Today she wanted to stay with the two time table but wanted something harder. I therefore mixed addition and subraction into the questions so that she really had to read each question. I also reversed the order of the multiplication so that she could see that the position of the numbers in a multiplication question doesn't matter - 2 x 4 is the same as 4 x 2. She got it with a sudden PING of understanding.

She also didn't use the unifix cubes today at all. They were upstairs and we were downstairs.

It has been very interesting to be alongside Livi as she has learnt this. I have enough knowledge to know what to do next and she completely trusts me. It has been entirely positive.

As we went along I asked Livi a few questions.

How do you learn best - listening, watching or doing? Doing.
Do you usually understand first time or do you need to see and hear more than once before you get instructions? Lots of times and it is best if I read it.
You are good at maths so what is it that makes you think you are not good? At school we only get one go at getting it right then we sit down. I feel all flustered and can't think, so I always get it wrong.
Did you always feel like that? Last year with Mrs Ford, for instance? No, last year it was ok. I liked maths and I didn't get worritted. This year we have to be so fast that I can't think straight.

There is lots here that makes me feel cross with the school. Just because a particular teacher has a learning style, it is wrong to impose it on the whole class. This whole memorising and mental maths thing is so wrong at this age, but it is country wide and the easiest way to teach.

I also have concerns because I have been wondering for a while if Livi has similar processing problems to Abi and although they are not as severe if she does, the dip in confidence is not something I am happy to see. I hope that by working with me, like this, she will be able to work at her pace and not feel worried. We have arranged for her to go "down" to the "bottom set" this term, which may help as the pace is slower and hopefully there might even be some manipulatives to help them. Livi, incidently is very keen on this move! I am not keen on the teacher who is a tall, set in her ways, Scots lady. That is only relelvant because she gets more and more Scots sounding the more annoyed she is, until in the end no-one can understand her, parent or child!

In the meantime, I am ready to go in at extremely short notice, to fight Livi's corner and stop her from feeling rubbish about herself.

I would say, wish me luck, but I think it may be Mrs Norman who needs it