Teaching Place Value - One of the most difficult parts of teaching elementary school math is teaching place value. This is primarily due to the fact that no matter how much instruction children have received about place value, more often than not, they will still not understand it. In fact, in a lot of studies on the subject, it’s been found that only half of all fourth graders even understand the concepts behind place value. This is partially due to the way that place value is ordinarily taught, but it’s also due to children usually being taught how to do math in one way, and not necessarily being taught how to think about math problems on their own.
As a result, teaching place value is sometimes better if teachers allow children to figure out their own ways to solve problems. For instance, instead of demanding that students figure out how to add and subtract using the normal procedures, teachers can allow children to come up with their own procedures for adding and subtracting. Once this is done, it encourages children to actually think about the meaning of the numbers that they’re adding. The result is often that children will see the place value in numerals as the actual place value, instead of just the individual digits.
Teaching place value is highly important as it gives an important foundation for learning about the rest of math. Also, since it’s one of the first major concepts that is taught in math after simple addition of one digit numbers, it can provide a foundation for how children perceive math in the future. If children have been struggling with a difficult concept because they don’t understand the method that they’re being forced to use, they’ll likely have a less comfortable feeling when working math problems. On the other hand, children who are encouraged to think about problems in their own way often come up with methods that they understand, and feel more confident in their math abilities overall.
If you’re a new math teacher who is going to teach place value to children, you should think about taking a departure from the normal methods of doing so – mostly because those methods are being shown to not work.
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