We had Mental Math sessions in class. The goal was to teach you how to do math without pen/paper, calculators were not even an option. I try to teach some of this to my 6 y o.
> The goal was to teach you how to do math without pen/paper, calculators were not even an option. I try to teach some of this to my 6 y o.
It works quite well. I do the math lessons during bath-time daily with my 6 yo. He's up to the point were he can add multiply pretty much any number by 2, 3 or 4 as long as the product is under 3 digits.
Going from adding single digits to multiplication of random 2-digit numbers by 4 with lessons only during bath-time (no paper or whiteboard) gives a child a great deal of confidence with numbers.
It's great. Personally I am the worst at mental math and resort to a calculator for any stuff beyond 2 digits multiplications, but at least I know how to do it (very slowly) if I have to, and this means I could have an intuition of an erroneous answer a calculator could have given me (for simple stuff but you get my point).
Computer science teaching really needs to be prepared to do the same progression as math, but even harsher because LLMs are not even deterministic.
It works quite well. I do the math lessons during bath-time daily with my 6 yo. He's up to the point were he can add multiply pretty much any number by 2, 3 or 4 as long as the product is under 3 digits.
Going from adding single digits to multiplication of random 2-digit numbers by 4 with lessons only during bath-time (no paper or whiteboard) gives a child a great deal of confidence with numbers.