And we had hoped to have been bringing you Arthur the Human Chameleon, but this afternoon, he crawled across a tartan rug and died of exhaustion. Ronnie Barker
I am enjoying the prospect of watching Arthur crawl across the tartan rugs of the Findings From the New Zealand Numeracy Development Projects 2005 in the next few weeks. I’m watching for a colour palette that includes the colours of “enviable intellectual suppleness”, “moral maneuverability” and "the longest river on earth"
I also want to capture the colours of educators who respond to research results suggesting that a massive nationwide intervention in professional learning for educators has compromised the ability of young New Zealanders to do maths.
The headlines in the Stuart Dye's article in the New Zealand Herald today are easy to interpret Simple sums our kids can't do
Given the intensity, the time demands and the prescriptiveness of the professional learning that New Zealand teachers experience when their schools sign up for the numeracy contract I am guessing that many of them will be undergoing “Arthur the human chameleon” like colour changes when they read the results of their faithful interventions.
These colour changes will become kaleidoscopic when teachers realise that "the blame game” has already started.
It seems that Education Minister Steve Maharey said the results were "a bit of a wake-up call". … “the results were a reminder that core skills had to be taught well and teachers would be reminded of this.
Ministry of Education senior learning policy analyst Steve Benson said the drop in basic abilities was a concern. Adding "They've taken their eye off the ball in basic facts."
So what advice do we offer teachers who, by faithfully doing what was asked of them, find themselves caught up in this new blame game –
The FAQ` link on the NZ Maths Numeracy Project has suggested answers to teachers fretting over this new challenge to teach basic facts
How do I teach the basic facts?
There is no point in trying to teach the basic facts before their meaning is understood.
For example, in the case of multiplication it is common to see children who knows 6 x 5 = 30 but cannot make up a problem that is answered by this fact. Provided the meaning of operations is understood teachers have many activities that will aid the learning basic facts. Often initially this is by process.
For example: recalling 5 x 5 = 25 and 2 x 5 = 10 a child may deduce 7 x 5 is 25 + 10 = 35 which is a part-whole process. This is fine for children who are not advanced multiplicative in their thinking, but teachers need to be aware that the inability to instantly recall will seriously effect advanced multiplicative thinkers ability to think quickly and accurately.
For example trying to share $377 among 5 people requires a student to 370 ÷ 5 = 7 tens with remainder 2 tens without having to work out the answers to the 5 times facts. Similarly early additive students need the instant recall of the basic addition/subtraction facts. Hopefully this occurs during the advanced counting stage of thinking.
Seems that hope wasn’t enough
Perhaps we will have to resort to “the longest river on earth” thinking. Perhaps we can argue that knowing that “simple arithmetical calculations are the building blocks for numeracy and are also used often in everyday life” is not important so long as the kids enjoy what they are doing. Perhaps we can argue that ICTs like cell phones will give students all the basic facts calculating stuff they'll need to "lead a good life in a well functioning society"
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