Concepts Before Procedures, you're in the clear?

December 5, 2016

I have a 6.5 year old son who loves to rattle off math facts. Jo Boaler talks about how she never memorized math facts. I have to believe her, but I just can't wrap my head around it.

We are still working on concepts, but his school values facts/procedures/memorization. Now, not only do I agree that these facts have a place, I have a hard time imagining life without them.

Driving home tonight (after day 1 of Robert Kaplinsky's 1st Grassroots Workshop...fantastic!) my son rattles off his newest memorization,

                          "10 times 10 is 100! I know multiplication!"

Clearly he has been hanging out with his 3rd grade buddy. So being the math nerd/teacher that I am, I asked,

                          "Why"?
                          "Because Gavin said so."
                          "Well what IS multiplication?"

I have a lot of practice questioning this kid :)

                          "Its sort of like subtraction, like 10 minus 100 is multiplication."
                          "Not quite, kid. Do you want to learn multiplication?"

Sidebar: I have a hard time letting my son be wrong. I was told: phonetic spelling, backwards 3's, etc.he'll get there. I don't like allowing him to believe he is correct when he clearly isn't. I also need my son to learn how to deal with being right and wrong.

Anyway, he was excited to learn something for big kids. So I explained it as repeated addition. 10 times 10 is just counting to 10, ten times. (How many times can I say 10). So we skip counted through to 100.

Then we tried 10 times 2. Or 10, two times. We tried a couple more 10's facts until he felt comfortable. Then we tried some 5's. He understood quickly. We are talking less than 5 minutes of doing the repeated addition together.

So I took this video, BUT he turned it off before he explained why AND I couldn't get him to do it again (on film).

Okay so RIGHT when he was about to get to the point, "you add 6 two times", his finger turned off the video. BUT, he had never heard 6 times 2 before, no coaching, nothing. The previous problem was 2 times 2, and he DID IT!!

Why is this cool? My son struggles with math. He gets all above grade level scores except in math. And now he can perform ANY multiplication problem you can give him. (Okay, so I have only done the 3's, but he gets it every time without any memorization). 

CONTEXT before PROCEDURE! 

I can honestly say that I am in awe at how my child can enjoy and succeed at these "math facts" without having ever creating the need for them to be facts. He knows the skill, he can apply it to any combination (within reason, he IS in 1st grade and would rather play basketball). Every time an elementary teacher has said to me something along the lines of needing to memorize eventually, or mentions practice sheets, I have always secretly agreed with them. I always assumed the exposure of context was enough to understand the why, but they still needed to do some rote memorization. I currently disagree with my own beliefs. 

WOW!

Maybe I will teach him fractions before school does. ;)