During my sixth year of teaching, I asked the class to divide a five-digit number by a two-digit number. For middle schoolers, this felt like a straightforward task. I walked around the classroom to see how everyone was approaching their work. Suddenly, I stopped at one of the students’ desks and said, “Are you playing Hang Man in my class?”. Of course he wasn’t, but I needed a way into his work. He explained how he learned to divide using a method they’re calling “repeated subtraction.” Rather than getting the exact number of times the divisor goes into the dividend, this method gives him multiple opportunities to find the number of divisor groupings that could fit into the dividend. But at first, I was confused why that worked. Actually, I think my face rebuked it.
I asked, “How did you do that?” and watched the student do it and explain it to me. Oh, and then I went home and tried it, too.
Before I found the quotient, I kept thinking about all this newer math my students did before they got to middle school. The lattice method of multiplication. Making tens. Area models. The growing list of pedagogical methods and approaches that differed from how my generation and previous generations learned math continues to press on. More of my people from different walks of life are asking me “What’s up with this new math?” But after I explain it to them, I still don’t feel satisfied with my answer.
Ultimately, it boils down to whether schools can do a good job of telling families why we’re doing what we’re doing. And we’re not. Let me explain.
Subscribe to continue reading
Subscribe to get access to the rest of this post and other subscriber-only content.