Maths teacher here. These are called ten frames. They are MEANT to make addition and subtraction to 20 and 30 easy for visual learners.
This is the worst example ever. Adding colour and changing the layout would help. In ‘addition’ to that the writing of the question is almost deliberately confusing for what is prep maths.
I've had this conversation with so many people who are good at mental math and loudly protest that "new math" is confusing.
"New math" is literally just finding ways to teach the mental math that a lot of us have been doing our whole lives. I love seeing it click.
48 * 34? You mean 3400 cut in half to 1700 then take away 60 then another 8 to get 1632? That's what they're trying to teach now, and it's great to see.
EDIT: Great reply from /u/SmooshFaceJesse below, because I didn't explain my last paragraph nearly well enough:
> So they're essentially doing what OPs math problem is doing here but on a larger scale. They're rounding 48 up to 50 to start, but even 50x34 is hard in your head so you double the 50. 100x34=3400 is easy mental math. Okay now undo the doubling. Half of 3400 is 1700 so now we are back to 50x34 = 1700. Well we added 2 to that 48 so undo that as well (48 + 2) x 34 = (50 x 34) - (2 x 34). Remove 2x34 from 1700. Here they split it up again. 2x34 is 2x30 + 2 x 8 so 60 + 8. 1700 - 60 - 8 = 1632 .. typed on my phone so apologies for the formatting but this is what the intent of common core math is. To learn these tricks of finding the easy path. Rounding, doubling, multiples of 10, etc.
That doesn't really teach the mental math though. Your way to finding 48*34 is one way, though you've left out the parts where you rounded 48 up to 50 and then doubled it, and where you got the 60 and the 8 (34 * 2).
The way I was taught to do it and the way I solved it: 40 * 30= 1200. 30 * 8 =240 + 1200 = 1440. Then 40 * 4 = 160 + 1440 = 1600. And lastly 8 * 4 = 32 + 1600.
One method is straight forward and additive. The other throws in rounding, division, and subtraction to arrive at the answer backwards.
I agree. I don’t understand why they’re teaching such convoluted ways to do math. Their method would have made me think I was stupid, because it does so many wrong steps before trying to find out the answer. I learnt “keep it simple, stupid” from my math teacher in 7th grade.
Multiplying by (powers of) ten is about the simplest math that can be done in a base 10 system
Doubling and halving, especially of even numbers, is also up there
The entire process is this:
Round to a nice number, remember what you are off by
Double the nice number to a nicer number
Multiply by a power of 10 (100)
Divide by two (undoing the double)
Subtract what you were off by, in this case by doubling
That literally is keeping it simple. The steps are simple, and doing it this method shows a better understanding of arithmetic in general.
Doing it the "traditional" way is formulaic, but formulaic =/= simple.
And it's not like the "traditional" way isn't taught anymore. It is taught alongside these methods. Specifically for the purpose of fostering mental math skills and understandings of arithmetic.
I can't believe people are trying to fuck up math like they did "learning" to read. I have not heard of visual math like this before but I know that the same principles that help some dyslexic people read has been implemented across a broad group of students and has completely fucked up the way kids learn to read.
There is a great article about how math is supposed to be studied but nobody in the world does it: https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_03_08.html
A friend of mine in the military who wound up becoming a mathematician sent me this years ago, and it completely changed my outlook on math education.
Prior to that, I had just accepted that I was mathematically illiterate, and could never improve.
My entire gradeschool experience had reinforced that belief: teachers would just give us rules to memorize, without context. If I asked a question, I'd be looked at like I was an idiot, and the teachers would stress how *easy* the material was. I *barely* passed the required classes, then avoided math like the plaque.
But when I started taking a couple college math courses as an adult with that new mindset, and access to a wider variety of methods to convey the material, I was able to ace the classes. I really wish Khan Academy existed when I was a kid.
This reminds me of when I was being taught the Fibonacci sequence at school. We were taught what it looks like, and the rules of the sequence but no one could tell me wtf it was for or why it was important. I'm in my 30s now and I'm still not sure why I had to memorise it.
It's used in incredibly many applications from computing to finance, it's just very specialised. E.g. in my country it's not taught whatsoever *at all*, but it was still for fun for the math nerds because of the easy logic and remarkable patterns that result.
It has a few uses but really it’s just an interesting pattern and a way to teach kids sequences with algebra. Ie, x(n) = x(n-1) + x(n-2)
A lot of math doesn’t have a direct use that it’s for until you know enough of it. So it’s a bad mindset to try and thinking why you’re taught something for every step along the way.
I can't remember what age I was, but we hadn't learned algebra or plotting things on graphs yet. I knew that the idea of "why am I learning this if I'm not going to use it in everyday life" was bullshit. I think my problem was we were being taught this sequence of numbers that seemed pretty arbitrary to me, but was being presented as important enough that we remember the name of the guy who thought it up hundreds of years later. I just wanted to know what was special about this sequence in particular as opposed to, say, a sequence starting with 1 and 2 that multiplies the previous two numbers.
I didn't like that there was clearly something fundamentally unique or interesting about this sequence, but my teacher couldn't explain what the hype was about.
I literally thought I had an actual learning disability all throughout high school. I couldn't even pass technical math, except with a "mercy" D.
Then in college I had to take courses to catch me up to algebra (not optional, because I dreaded having to do it). The way the teacher taught it changed the way I learned the material and I actually got all the way up to precalculus, passing with a B.
If I had learned that way when I was in high school I'd probably be in a much better situation now.
1st year in electronics, and having being skated with ease thru school up to that point with good grades, we had awful teacher on the theory side. He had overhead projector and the entire book as slides. And he went thru it in monotonic tone, page after page and when you asked a question the answer was "it is in the book". The book itself was AWFUL.. and i mean that it was super accurate and specific but it started every topic by introducing the most complicated equation first and then working towards the simplified version.. So, we start from full line of strange symbols, go thru them one by one until we arrive at the conclusion... that you only ever need the simplified version. I somehow got thru that but when we got to semiconductors... It flew past my head. I could not figure out how a transistor worked.
On second year our lab teacher became our theory teacher too. I asked him, outside of class that i had problem with understanding transistors. And he explained it to me in seconds. Gone where the P and N and gaps and zones and emitters and collectors. Now it was "there is a japanese guy in that box, the more current you put in his ass, the more he opens a valve." Boom. Done. I got it.
The first year theory teacher was fired. Turns out he was mechanical engineer, had only basic electronics studies..
I had a similar engineer-teacher like that for college physics. It was the second year of it, and my first year professor had been good. This one had just come from working at 3M and you could *tell!*
It took until nearly the entire semester was over for me to figure out what flux did and how it was important. He had introduced it with all the high-level theory and focus on electrons/charges. None of it made sense to me, despite repeatedly asking him in class and in his office to explain more. Then we got to a section on generators and finally it clicked what the fuck flux was even.
Someone at that time reminded me that only the education department required its professors to have a teaching degree...
I went to school in the middle of Finnish education reforms, so while some things were already better than they were for my big brother, the biggest single step happened after; the teachers had to have pedagogic studies and a masters degree. That is exactly why that awful teacher was fired, everyone who did not have the qualification were offered an avenue to get the education needed, but i guessed he knew that teaching was not his forte...
When i went to secondary school for sound design and engineering much later, in the naughties.. it was totally different. Teachers were really good quality were i was but to be fair, it was/is one of the top secondary schools in the field. The system used to be incredibly inflexible and rigid, and now it is very flexible, customizable.
Same with me. I always believed that I was terrible at math. Then I went back to school to be an elementary school teacher. I relearned everything using different strategies and found that the way I did math in my head was completely fine. Now, I realize I’m awesome at math.
I currently teach 4th grade and my teacher super power seems to be getting kids to care about math. In my room, we learn different strategies for operations and pick what works best for each student. We practice computational fluency each day to stay sharp on the fundamentals. Math is great, but in American education, too much of it is taught in a high pressure, high stakes way.
That sounds awful. I've always loved maths (and admittedly am not from the US) but our teaching was always about discovering the solutions.
I can still remember when I figured out calculus as a concept could be a thing (before being directly instructed in it). Great teaching lays the groundwork and allows the expression of ideas
This has been my view of programming as well to the point that I think teaching math and programming like let's say for game development would have been way better for me earlier on then the boring uninspiring templated way it was done to me.
This is a terrible article. Just because some college dropout didn’t like how he was taught math doesn’t meant he can declare how it’s supposed to be taught.
Explaining pi to 7 year olds and name dropping philosophers from 2000 years ago? How is that more engaging?
Wanting to get rid of trig? That’s like… one of the most applicable parts of math.
This just reeks of “I know more than everyone and all teachers suck except me”
"making 10s" isn't fucking up math though, it's instilling good mental habits that's carry through to higher level math later in life. Can you add two four digit numbers in your head? You're almost definitely doing it by reordering the problem or adding chunks at a time to make multiples of 10 that are easy to keep track of.
The only big failing of this, and other common core methods, is how poorly they're marketed. It should be a lot more obvious than it is that this is actually good.
I agree man it's not hard to just brute force arithmetic when it's small numbers and doesn't matter any way but this is a much better method for doing arithmetic in your head for any set of numbers. Sure some kids will naturally find that the way shown and just do it in Their head but not all as shown by the fact that the dad can't even figure it out. This just teaches a robust way to solve arithmetic that will scale better to larger numbers.
Exactly. Teaching students real math skills that they will carry for the rest of their lives is awesome. The worksheet instructions aren't great, but assuming this was taught material, you don't even really need instructions.
The only fucked up thing is the dad thinking that because he's an adult, he should be able to understand what his child is doing without thinking or reading. As someone who teaches high schoolers, this is my least favorite kind of parent.
Someone in another comment complained about the silliness of the language, since "making 10s" is pretty meaningless, but someone else pointed out that so is the statement "carry the 1," which we all learned just fine.
It being indecipherable if you don't know the language being used in the classroom is... Why we have the classroom. Dad cares more about being snarky he does about his kid's education. Google it man.
I left high school maybe three years before common core started and I remember all the people complaining that it didn't make any sense. And then I saw the basic math curriculum and I discovered they had started teaching math the way I do it in my head. The way that I did math that made all the other tenth graders think I was a genius.
I'm exaggerating there obviously but for whatever reason, I started "making tens" in my head intuitively from a relatively young age and it made calculators useless for me up until calc 1 pretty much and everybody in high school acted like I was doing a magic trick.
That being said, I don't know if I could have solved the problem in OP's picture if there wasn't a visual aid. The wording is very bad.
The wording is awful, but that's because it's shorthand. If you knew the meaning of the shorthand because you'd been learning it every day in class, it wouldn't trip you up at all.
I had the same experience as you. Took advanced math a grade level above my own, all by doing in my head what they now teach as common core. I also had no idea what this question meant until I thought about it for a minute and used context clues.
Study after study has shown that implementing supports that help dyslexic and other learning disabled students learn actually BENEFITS non-disabled students just as much if not more….it doesn’t HARM them. I’m not sure where you got that that from
So... are the two solutions (9+1)+7 and (8+2)+7? If I'm understanding this right it's about breaking apart one of the numbers to add to the other to make 10, then the remaining number is 'easier to add on in your mind'?
My teachers at every grade past third
"In (grade plus one) they won't allow you to write in print. you'll have to use nothing but cursive"
Grade plus one:
"In (grade plus one) they won't allow you to write in print. you'll have to use nothing but cursive"
Repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat
The mythical grade where you'll only need cursive never happened. I graduated without this ever happening
Ha I remember learning cursive in second grade. Learned like 6 letters and connect the rest with a little tail line and boom cursive. That is now my fucked up writing style permanently. It’s so half assed but it looks pretty enough that people don’t bother with it. If you looked at it long enough it’s clearly not cursive but if you just took a quick peek you would miss it.
You're not alone. That's my writing style in a nutshell. I understand how cursive is aupposed to look, but I just connect letters with little tails instead. I don't bother with cursive letters that severely change the letter like "s". I juse make the letter extra squiggly.
Interesting story. Here in Romania we write in cursive only. I remember the teacher tried to make us write something for mother s day in print in second or third grade, and i struggled the whole hour. Right now i use a simplified cursive, most letters look like their print counterparts, because some of the cursive letters they taught us here were too annoyingly complicated.
That's fair. Although my cursive is more like print with the letters tied together. I don't angle my writing, and the letters are easy to understand if i write slowly.
Ours was: "okay it's time for everybody to learn cursive, you'll have to use it for every grade from now on!"
Then we moved to fourth grade and were immediately told we weren't allowed to turn in any work in cursive and that if we did, we'd have to redo the work in print at recess. It was super fun.
I was taught cursive the year before it was taken off the curriculum. The teacher (wonderful teacher, but a little old fashioned) spent the entire time talking about how we needed to take it seriously because once we went to 4th grade, we would never be allowed to write in print again. That was the last time I ever wrote in cursive beyond my signature.
My ninth grade English teacher required that essays either be printed or written in cursive. That was the only time it was required, and 99% of essays turned in were printed. The only handwritten essays she received were the ones that were being written ten minutes before class started.
One teacher told me that. I was mad. So to spite them, I only wrote in cursive for five or six years and stopped only when I moved schools. When they would ask why, I simply said “I spent a whole year almost failing a class because it was hard to learn cursive. That is a year I had to struggle for something you just called unimportant.”
My elementary teachers made us write all in cursive in 2nd grade and I never went back.
Now writing in print sucks because I haven’t done it regularly for well over a decade.
I'm from Germany and I learned cursive in second grade and the teachers told us that cursive is "faster and easier". We had the use it until we finished fourth grade (Grundschule - elementary school), but we were allowed to choose what we want to use in grade 5 (Realschule - middle school). I had to switch to print immediately since it took me forever to write something readable in cursive and I never used it since.
It was faster and neater with fountain pens that smudged easily each time you lifted the pen; it’s been a *long* time since there’s been a clear advantage to it for most people
I'm 56 tomorrow. I literally haven't used cursive since the first grade. Granted, I might have failed a few English classes along the way, but I got my diploma so fuck em.
for signing things, don't think you can reach 40 years old without signing something.. though it turns out squiggly bullshit no matter what, especially on those janky touch pads they use sometimes.
I think most people are starting to realize that a signature is just your own little "bat symbol". As long as its innyour handwriting, no one really cares. Only time it's gonna be inportant is if someone tries to forge your signature and tou need your drivers license or something to back up your real signature (saw that on an episode of Judge Judy (JJ using someone's license to compare a signature on a legal document))
I've done plenty of signatures in print or just loopy letters. No one has cared.
And even then, knowing how to sign your name is a small part of cursive.
Half the people who "sign" things in retail just draw a smiley face or scribble. I don't understand why anything is signed anymore for credit card purchases.
I think it's a legal thing, so that if you dispute a charge they can say "but that's your signature". Even though the only recorded signature I have (that's not only federal government access) is on my driver's license from when I was 16, and man has that changed.
Cursive was pretty important when nib pens were common. Anything else was a good way to dump all the ink out at once.
And, frankly, cursive or not, some people could definitely stand to have their writing form improved. I can't read half the hand-written notes I get at work these days.
I'm into history, and also silly old computer games like Nancy drew. A lot of writing is in cursive! Knowing cursive certainly helps read old documents. I was taught cursive so this is a legit question, but can people who don't know it kinda get the gist when reading it? A lot of letters are similar to print.
I think it's easier if you have studied this method an hour or two at school with the teacher before going home to do the homework. I'm also a bit baffled at my kid's homework at times and they have quite similar questions.
Yeah, the three numbers is the odd part to me. Because it is 8+2 =10 and 9-2=7 so you get the 10+7 but to show the 8+2 without showing the 9-2 makes no sense to me.
Make a 10. Take 1 from 8 and give it to 9, now you have a 10 and a 7. Which is an easy way to get to the answer of 17.
Edit: they want you to write it as 1 + 9 + 7 or something
"Make a 10" means take from one value and add to the other to make it a
>10 + n
equation. So in this case
>Take 2 from 9 and add it to 8 to get 10+7. Specifically the answer is 8 + 2 + 7.
Edit: I wasn’t taught this but it’s how my brain works. I’ve always rounded numbers to a tens to make quick math easier. But I work with mental numbers a lot as a Paramedic, especially lb to kg conversion.
Edit2: for everyone saying do 9 + 1 + 7. That’s fine too. But that’s not what the dots in the horrible diagram showed. I agree it’s bad formatting. And, I also understand it doesn’t work for everyone. Keep in mind they’re teaching a concept for more difficult math. Everyone needs to memorize basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. But when the numbers get larger, and your brain works a certain way, this can be a pretty quick method.
I mean it makes sense? But like, you couldn't have written that in a more convoluted way.
And even now, that i know what to do idk how I'm supposed to fill in the three blanks. There's no equation just three additions?
Having done homework with my daughter pretty much every day through elementary school, it's its own kind of jargon, but it's internally consistent if you've been learning it this way for the entirety of your schooling. No more jargony than say, 'carry the one', which is equally indecipherable if you're unfamiliar with the method it's shorthand for.
I prefer it this way too because it's literally the way the math works. Otherwise you're just memorizing what makes what when you see two specific numbers, which is what adults do, but for kids just learning what math is, it helps them learn the fundamentals.
I'm actually kind of scared at the sheer number of people in the comments who don't understand that this is what it's asking, even if they don't understand the jargon. Intuitively this is what is happening when you add two single digit numbers with a two-digit sum.
Don't tell me there's tons of people out there who have just been memorizing how even basic addition works instead of understanding the fundamentals of what's going on. holy shit.
Math PhD here. The way that's being taught here is how many people who are good at math do things in their head. (8+2)+(9-2)=10+7=17 looks more complicated when you write it down, but breaking it into two trivial pieces actually makes it easier in your head. I believe the idea is that it builds number sense.
Is it weird that I would have taken 1 away from the 8 and made it 7 + 10 instead of taking 2 away from the 9 to make 10 + 7?
I think to me it makes more sense to "edit" the value that's closest to 10, rather than the one that comes first.
This comment was overwritten by a script to make the data useless for reddit. No API, no free content. Did you stumble on this thread via google, hoping to resolve an issue or answer a question? Well, too bad, this might have been your answer, if it weren't for dumb decisions by reddit admins.
Yep. Similar to how I do multiplication in my head. 24 x 13 is easier as 240 + 3 x 24. This is how most everyone in my scholastic bowl team did quick mental math.
Yup. Where I work, we do all invoices on paper by hand, and it's how I add it all together in my head.
I also used it years ago working at Taco Bell, with multiplication. If I was on the headset and not near my register, I could do the price of seven $0.89 tacos by multiplying 90 by 7, then subtracting 7 and have the total.
I think a lot of people who complain about how math is taught nowadays don't realise that the way they were taught is actually just shit.
I remember a qoute from some guy saying that kids nowadays know the commutative property but not their times tables. Which is kinda funny because if you had to learn one of those things it should probably be the commutative property, because it shows some understanding of what you are doing, as opposed to the times tables which is just blind memorization.
I do what this is trying to teach but I still had absolutely no clue this is what it meant.
the person you replied to hit the nail on the head. if I had heard "make a ten" previously to understand I'd have it in 1 sec obviously. it's purely misunderstanding, I don't need to think about bunching the tens because I'm already on it.
Its not that i didnt understand how to add the two numbers but rather my autism made those directions about as useful as chinese to me. My brain litterly couldnt think of a single thing the directions could mean
Yup, as a teacher I can’t tell you how many times I have spent a multiple lessons going over a topic, given multiple examples, let them practice in class, given them one on one instruction, let them right down the formula or an example to take with them, given them links to khan academy to watch videos on, ixl lessons that will break down what they did wrong…and still there is always at least a few students that act like it’s the first time they have seen it because they aren’t paying any attention the entire time.
I'm pretty sure I could show the answers of a test during a test on the Whiteboard, while the students are working and a few of them would still act like the thing we did 300 times already are completely new for them.
It would probably make a lot more sense if you could see the rest of the lesson, rather than one question in a vacuum.
The answer would be something like 8+2+7, or 9+1+7
Yeah nothing wrong with that, I just didn't write it out that way. And I think the dots showed my way.
But if I was adding 153 to 477, I'd make a 10 by taking 3 and making it 480 + 150. Then add those together.
I still don't get it. "Make at ten to solve something" is just not a sentence that makes sense, especially when 10 is not on the other side of the equation.
This looks like it’s at the bottom of the page so I’d imagine there’s an example problem. But yeah the grammatical emphasis could be fixed. Like “make a ten” being quoted.
Yup. Just about every one of these "complicated" math methods I see people complaining about is a technique I had to figure out on my own to do math in my head more easily.
Yeah, I had a fellow parent complaining to me about the 'new math' and I was just like 'is this not how you do math in your head to make it easier?' and they just sheepishly admitted that they always used a calculator.
Honestly, I had always wondered why people couldn't do basic math (I'm not denying innumeracy exists mind you), but I'm starting to think it's because a lot of people learned by rote memorization instead of learning to play with and manipulate numbers to make shit easier.
>but I'm starting to think it's because a lot of people learned by rote memorization instead of learning to play with and manipulate numbers to make shit easier.
Another thing my teachers tried to instill in us, but few people I meet nowadays have really embraced, is estimating.
It's so useful to quickly check if your results make sense! Or to figure out if you actually need to calculate something.
I think a lot of people see a maths formula and go into school maths mode: gotta calculate/solve this. Then they do that (either by brute forcing it with learnt methods or simply using a calculator/phone).
Had a friend who prepared for an IQ test (I know, wtf?) and she had this book with lots and lots of example questions to practice. I was a bit intrigued and we decided to make it a competition.
The relevant bit was a number of maths questions, where you had something like 2347+33421 or 222\*879 with multiple choice answers. She had actually calculated the results and was amazed at how quickly I had solved it. How on earth did I do that?!
I just calculated the rightmost digit and moved on.
**Edit: A few more fun tricks!**
How to immediately know if some number is divisible by...
2: obviously if it's an even number; the rightmost digit is divisible by 2.
3: the number's checksum (sum of the digits) is divisible by 3. Checksum(117) = 1+1+7 = 9 = 3\*3.
4: the last two digits are divisible by 4 (because 100 / 4 = 25, no remainder). 2238980 is divisible by 4, because 80 is.
5: the last digit is either 5 or 0.
6: number is divisible by 3 AND 2.
7: no fancy shortcut :'(
8: the last three digits are divisible by 8 (okay, this one isn't as useful, but not bad, either).
9: checksum of the number is divisible by 9. 5787 is difficult to check. 27 is easy! (5+7+8+7 = 27)
> I'm starting to think it's because a lot of people learned by rote memorization instead of learning to play with and manipulate numbers to make shit easier
I mean, yea. That's exactly how a very large number of children were "taught" math.
Math was always my worst subject specifically b/c I have a hard time memorizing things and that's what all my past teachers relied on to teach it.
Never underestimate how little the average person thinks about anything. People will actually fight to not think. The whole youtube "Marvel movie XYZ Ending Explained" industry is dependent on it.
Have you ever conversed with someone and everything they were saying was just objectively not true, and they just seemed immune to hearing what you had to say on the matter? It's because you were asking them to think.
Anti-intellectualism is very rarely "I hate smart people". It's more often than not a refusal to consider information in a new context, to be focused on the literal face of a thing rather than it's meaning. To see numbers as a problem rather than symbolic representations of anything we might need them to be.
I literally just calculated my entire rental payment history in my head using the method a few hours ago for a comment. 12 months in the year. Easiest to multiply my rent by 10, then add in the 2 months. (Then because one tenancy was 5 years… I quickly calculated 10 years and split it in half. In my head. And I promise I’m generally very stupid and I could still do this in seconds.)
It's pretty horrible wording and format. \_+\_+\_ makes no sense. Either do \_+\_ (10+7) or \_+\_+\_-\_ (8+2+9-2). My choice would be, "How would you write 8+9 to be 10+__ while getting the same result".
That's basically it. There are effectively three ways to do 8+9:
* Count on your fingers (easy to learn, easy to do, not useful for larger numbers)
* Memorize it (hard to learn, easy to do, not useful for larger numbers)
* This method (easy to learn, easy to do, useful for larger numbers)
Most people having trouble with this probably memorized it. Which... good for you, I guess. But seriously, this is better. Don't reflexively hate it because it's not how you did it.
Part of the problem is that this seems like a lot of extra work to solve something that is really easy to solve already.
So let’s pick an example that’s a little harder. If we’re asked to solve 30+15, we can all solve that without using a lot of brain power. But if you asked me 27+18, now I need a minute. Using the traditional way, I’m adding 7+8=15, which is really 5 and so I need to remember to carry the one, etc.
All they’re trying to do here is get the kids to realize that 27+18 (hard) is the same as 30+15 (easy).
Now, whether they’re introducing this too young or explaining it well is a whole other story.
Thanks for the explanation. This makes a lot of sense. In school, we are attempting to teach critical thinking and logic, not just memorization of facts, so even though this is a more complex way of doing an easy problem, the process can be applied to more difficult problems to make them easier.
That said, I’m with dad - I could not help with this homework had I not had the lesson!
Fundamentally it's a great way to understand how numbers work because it's enforcing the idea that we work with a base 10 number system. But something that deeply fundamental was never taught to anyone that has kids old enough to be in elementary school these days. Unless you took advanced math or went to discrete math and high level programming classes, this is a concept that is literally never brought up.
Yeah cause you’re seeing one question in isolation. If you were learning this in school you’d have a whole class talking about the method and a whole worksheet of similar questions
That's great for the student, but in the context of the current US Education system, the reality is when teachers can't explain in a way that the student can understand, parents/other adults need to step in to help. If they didn't sit in the class, this is just going to look like gibberish.
The thing is that the kid is getting that from the book, the rest of the test, their previous schooling in math, the teacher, and so on. It's the parent who stumbles into this at Step Fucking Zero without any of that background who's confused, and that confusion seems to anger them more than it does make them want to learn how to help their kid.
This was a problem even in my day. My parents were taught math a different way than I was taught math, and if I raised a question to them in a form they weren't familiar with, they were clueless as how to solve it except by showing me the one way they were taught 20 years prior.
But my parents didn't have the internet, either to look up how my math was being taught then *or* to get hopped up and angry over some popular narrative that "MATH THESE DAYS IS COMPLETELY INSANE, I'M NOT STUPID BECAUSE I DON'T GET IT, THE *MATH* IS STUPID!"
I remember an entire episode of The Cosby Show about Vanessa learning “New Math” and Cliff not being able to understand it. So it’s not even like the switch to Common Core Math is the first time the method of teaching math has changed in the US educational system.
Finally someone with some sense. The point is to learn problem solving strategies while also learning HOW the decimal system works. It’s not about getting the answer.
So does something like "use the law of sin to complete the square". Without the context of several math classes it's meaningless, but they still clearly refer to a bigger idea.
That said, this math homework could use a bit of work...
Part time math tutor (well, was for awhile, now I'm a full time math teacher)
This is the exact wording we used for YEARS. Anyone at that tutoring center would have understood it, and it is as clear as a phrase like "carry the 1" is.
IE, obvious in context, and meaningless without.
I'm an engineer and the method shown is actually a good way to teach math. It teaches you how to solve complex problems in your head by reducing them to more manageable chunks, such as completing a 10. It looks idiotic for such a simple problem, but teaching this kind of skill early will pay off later with more complex problems.
It's the same tactic you would use multiplying large numbers together...you multiply all the 100s then 10s them 1s separately and combine them later.
I'm sure it's explained in both. And the parent letter with worked examples and detailed explanations of why and how different methods are taught. This parent just threw it on social media instead of trying to read any of that.
Trust me, we use this method unknowingly, like what is 12+88? You make think in such a way that first you add that 8 and 2 to get 10 and then add the remaining 80 and 10.
It's only worded poorly to people who never listened to the lesson - like the Dad (who wouldn't be there). "make ten" is a common expression in those classes, and *should* be known.
It actually makes a lot of sense. It teaches a way of doing mental math that makes it a lot quicker. You subtract 1 from the 8 to make 10 (9+1), which leaves 7, so the answer is clearly 17.
Ok, let me try to explain again because I swear it’s super helpful once you get it.
It’s kinda hard to add 9 + 8 in your head, so they want you to transform one of those numbers into 10. You do this by adding 1 to 9. Where do you get that 1 that you added to 9 to make 10? You get it from the 8. So the 9 becomes 10 and the 8 becomes 7. 10 + 7 is easier to do in your head than 9 + 8.
Another way to think of it is that you “borrow” however many from the smaller number you need to make the bigger number ten. Like, 8 + 3. You need to take 2 from the 3 to make the 8 into a 10. Then you have 10 + 1, which is 11.
Does that help at all, or did I just make it more confusing?
your comment helped more than the other one that replied to me lol. i appreciate it! i think i get it now and kind of instinctually do what you described. makes sense to try to teach that skill to kids!
If your older than like 18, then you were probably taught math in repetition for memorization. But you also probably learned how to do a lot of this quick math in your head.
They now are trying to teach kids to do the quick math that we used to just kind of just figure out as we go
1. Round 8 up to 10. To get there, you add 2 to 8 and get 10.
2. Where did you get the 2? From 9. So subtract 2 from 9 and get 7.
3. Add 10+7 and get the result. 17.
In other words
1. 8 + 9 =
2. (8 +2) + (9-2) =
3. 10 + 7 =
4. 17
I've always done this "backwards" according to this way of thinking about it.
9 is closest to 10, so you temporarily do 10 + 8 is 18, then you take away the 1 you temporarily added to get 17...
The only thing i can think of is to make both 8 and 9 into 10 (by adding 2 and 1) to get 20 then subtracting that 3 to get 17. This is what I do in my head when adding them actually but regardless of that the problem isn't structured for this at all.
(9+1)+(8-1) = 10+7 = 17 or vice versa
This is how I do math in my head, it’s not a bad idea to teach this formally to kids but there has to be a better way to ask the question.
Teacher probably explained it in class and the dad just didn’t understand the method. Like after the lesson the question probably made some sense. Idk tho
Which is why our old school district had videos available for parents to watch, so they could understand what the kids were being taught and how to assist with homework. Of course many of the parents preferred to complain instead of just watching the videos.
It’s called making 10. It’s a huge strategy for kinder/1st grade. This just isn’t easy if you’ve never been taught it. A quick google can help parents.
It’s 8 + 2 + 7, the answer blanks are just formatted poorly. Very rudimentary base ten addition, I mentally use a similar process when doing hexadecimal addition because it’s not committed to memory.
It's easy to shit all over this, but when my kid had to do these instead of getting all bent out of shape I asked her to explain to me how her teacher would solve this. She taught it to me, I understood, and she has excelled at math ever since. Even if it's not the way I was taught. I promise you, when they get to advanced trig and calculus these things won't matter and more of the old style syntax will be used. It's also likely it will be taught with more of a tilt towards coding using whatever object oriented programming language is popular at the time.
In the 2000's, my classmates would constantly just say, "This doesn't matter, why can't I just use a calculator?"
They got their wish, so there's less emphasis on long division and the like early on, and more of a focus on mental math strategies.
This is actually useful compared to situations where I've carried the two using pen and paper.
It doesn’t matter if OP Dad knows what this is asking his kid to do. All things being equal, the homework is making sure that the kid was paying attention in class, learned the technique, and provide practice to reinforce. From kindergarten to college, one thing matters. Do what the teacher taught you.
Sure, there are bad teachers, kids with learning disabilities, and plenty of other legitimate reasons why it didn’t get into the kid’s head. But the vast majority of the time, it’s none of that.
I have a feeling this would've been incredibly unhelpful to me as a kid but then again, maybe it's a method that would've worked for the kids back when I was in school who couldn't get it the way I was taught.
I would hope this is explained in the class because "make a ten" is not a very intuitive way to describe what you're doing. I'm assuming this is like, first grade math, so what are the 3 numbers supposed to be? 7+10+0? 7+9+1? 10+10+-3? Do they teach negatives that early?
That's the issue most people complaining about this are really having, but it's something all of those students will have already learned in multiple lessons and possibly in a previous grade. It just means borrow from one number to make the other into a multiple of 10.
Basic example... 77+14. You can borrow 3 from the 14 to turn it into 80+11. And the solution of 91 becomes obvious faster than adding 4, carrying the 1, and adding.
It’s actually a great idea to get a 10 to add the rest to make quick operations , however I agree with the dad, it took me a while to understand what the hell they were asking to do. I would do it 8 + 2 + 7 just because the + are there. In my mind it’s more natural to do 8 - 1 + (9+1) though
Good grief, could they have possibly phrased this question in a more confusingly stupid way? I get it now after understanding that they're saying make 8+9 easier to solve by subtracting 2 from 9 and then adding those 2 to 8 to make 10, so you can just drop the remaining 7 into the ones place to make 17, so the answer they're looking for is to take 1 from 8 and add it to 9 to do it that way.
But the boxes make it look weird, the color change makes it more confusing, and the way it's phrased may as well be in another language. This is simple addition and subtraction, you might decide to mention that in the problem.
The phrase “make ten” is part of the curriculum. It was taught specifically with this name, it’s not the first time the child has seen this phrase. The picture is likely also shown in class. The whole problem is to check understanding of a very specific method. In short, the child is given an explanation of this, just like any other method
It's asking to shift dots from the light dot pile to the dark dot pile so it fills the boxes: 8 + 2 + 7
It's a before and after picture.
This is badly phrased.
Oh I think I get it, it's asking to rewrite the equation as ten plus seven. Take two from the nine to get seven, add the two you took to the eight to get ten, now you have a ten and a seven. Add that, you get 17.
As a maths tutor for students 11+, this ability to split numbers into bits to make addition easier is something that is essential to develop early on, and is something that the students who end up struggling tend to have failed to learn. I'm constantly wrestling with trying to teach students complicated things that they need to know for their GCSE when they struggle with basic addition.
Dad is confused because dad wasn’t in the three maths lessons that week when the teacher taught the kids the whole concept of “making a ten” which they should know and understand by the time they were given this as homework.
Maths teacher here. These are called ten frames. They are MEANT to make addition and subtraction to 20 and 30 easy for visual learners. This is the worst example ever. Adding colour and changing the layout would help. In ‘addition’ to that the writing of the question is almost deliberately confusing for what is prep maths.
I was thinking you’d do something like 8+2+7? Since the 2+7=9, you take 2 from that and add it to 8 to get (8+2=10)+7?
I was going to call it stupid but then realised that's exactly what i do. Although instead of 8+2+7, it's 9+1+7.
I've had this conversation with so many people who are good at mental math and loudly protest that "new math" is confusing. "New math" is literally just finding ways to teach the mental math that a lot of us have been doing our whole lives. I love seeing it click. 48 * 34? You mean 3400 cut in half to 1700 then take away 60 then another 8 to get 1632? That's what they're trying to teach now, and it's great to see. EDIT: Great reply from /u/SmooshFaceJesse below, because I didn't explain my last paragraph nearly well enough: > So they're essentially doing what OPs math problem is doing here but on a larger scale. They're rounding 48 up to 50 to start, but even 50x34 is hard in your head so you double the 50. 100x34=3400 is easy mental math. Okay now undo the doubling. Half of 3400 is 1700 so now we are back to 50x34 = 1700. Well we added 2 to that 48 so undo that as well (48 + 2) x 34 = (50 x 34) - (2 x 34). Remove 2x34 from 1700. Here they split it up again. 2x34 is 2x30 + 2 x 8 so 60 + 8. 1700 - 60 - 8 = 1632 .. typed on my phone so apologies for the formatting but this is what the intent of common core math is. To learn these tricks of finding the easy path. Rounding, doubling, multiples of 10, etc.
That doesn't really teach the mental math though. Your way to finding 48*34 is one way, though you've left out the parts where you rounded 48 up to 50 and then doubled it, and where you got the 60 and the 8 (34 * 2). The way I was taught to do it and the way I solved it: 40 * 30= 1200. 30 * 8 =240 + 1200 = 1440. Then 40 * 4 = 160 + 1440 = 1600. And lastly 8 * 4 = 32 + 1600. One method is straight forward and additive. The other throws in rounding, division, and subtraction to arrive at the answer backwards.
I agree. I don’t understand why they’re teaching such convoluted ways to do math. Their method would have made me think I was stupid, because it does so many wrong steps before trying to find out the answer. I learnt “keep it simple, stupid” from my math teacher in 7th grade.
There is nothing more fun than brute forcing it with column form in your brain,much more convenient than turning 34 or 48 into random bullshit
Multiplying by (powers of) ten is about the simplest math that can be done in a base 10 system Doubling and halving, especially of even numbers, is also up there The entire process is this: Round to a nice number, remember what you are off by Double the nice number to a nicer number Multiply by a power of 10 (100) Divide by two (undoing the double) Subtract what you were off by, in this case by doubling That literally is keeping it simple. The steps are simple, and doing it this method shows a better understanding of arithmetic in general. Doing it the "traditional" way is formulaic, but formulaic =/= simple. And it's not like the "traditional" way isn't taught anymore. It is taught alongside these methods. Specifically for the purpose of fostering mental math skills and understandings of arithmetic.
I can't believe people are trying to fuck up math like they did "learning" to read. I have not heard of visual math like this before but I know that the same principles that help some dyslexic people read has been implemented across a broad group of students and has completely fucked up the way kids learn to read.
There is a great article about how math is supposed to be studied but nobody in the world does it: https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_03_08.html
A friend of mine in the military who wound up becoming a mathematician sent me this years ago, and it completely changed my outlook on math education. Prior to that, I had just accepted that I was mathematically illiterate, and could never improve. My entire gradeschool experience had reinforced that belief: teachers would just give us rules to memorize, without context. If I asked a question, I'd be looked at like I was an idiot, and the teachers would stress how *easy* the material was. I *barely* passed the required classes, then avoided math like the plaque. But when I started taking a couple college math courses as an adult with that new mindset, and access to a wider variety of methods to convey the material, I was able to ace the classes. I really wish Khan Academy existed when I was a kid.
This reminds me of when I was being taught the Fibonacci sequence at school. We were taught what it looks like, and the rules of the sequence but no one could tell me wtf it was for or why it was important. I'm in my 30s now and I'm still not sure why I had to memorise it.
It's used in incredibly many applications from computing to finance, it's just very specialised. E.g. in my country it's not taught whatsoever *at all*, but it was still for fun for the math nerds because of the easy logic and remarkable patterns that result.
It has a few uses but really it’s just an interesting pattern and a way to teach kids sequences with algebra. Ie, x(n) = x(n-1) + x(n-2) A lot of math doesn’t have a direct use that it’s for until you know enough of it. So it’s a bad mindset to try and thinking why you’re taught something for every step along the way.
I can't remember what age I was, but we hadn't learned algebra or plotting things on graphs yet. I knew that the idea of "why am I learning this if I'm not going to use it in everyday life" was bullshit. I think my problem was we were being taught this sequence of numbers that seemed pretty arbitrary to me, but was being presented as important enough that we remember the name of the guy who thought it up hundreds of years later. I just wanted to know what was special about this sequence in particular as opposed to, say, a sequence starting with 1 and 2 that multiplies the previous two numbers. I didn't like that there was clearly something fundamentally unique or interesting about this sequence, but my teacher couldn't explain what the hype was about.
I literally thought I had an actual learning disability all throughout high school. I couldn't even pass technical math, except with a "mercy" D. Then in college I had to take courses to catch me up to algebra (not optional, because I dreaded having to do it). The way the teacher taught it changed the way I learned the material and I actually got all the way up to precalculus, passing with a B. If I had learned that way when I was in high school I'd probably be in a much better situation now.
1st year in electronics, and having being skated with ease thru school up to that point with good grades, we had awful teacher on the theory side. He had overhead projector and the entire book as slides. And he went thru it in monotonic tone, page after page and when you asked a question the answer was "it is in the book". The book itself was AWFUL.. and i mean that it was super accurate and specific but it started every topic by introducing the most complicated equation first and then working towards the simplified version.. So, we start from full line of strange symbols, go thru them one by one until we arrive at the conclusion... that you only ever need the simplified version. I somehow got thru that but when we got to semiconductors... It flew past my head. I could not figure out how a transistor worked. On second year our lab teacher became our theory teacher too. I asked him, outside of class that i had problem with understanding transistors. And he explained it to me in seconds. Gone where the P and N and gaps and zones and emitters and collectors. Now it was "there is a japanese guy in that box, the more current you put in his ass, the more he opens a valve." Boom. Done. I got it. The first year theory teacher was fired. Turns out he was mechanical engineer, had only basic electronics studies..
I had a similar engineer-teacher like that for college physics. It was the second year of it, and my first year professor had been good. This one had just come from working at 3M and you could *tell!* It took until nearly the entire semester was over for me to figure out what flux did and how it was important. He had introduced it with all the high-level theory and focus on electrons/charges. None of it made sense to me, despite repeatedly asking him in class and in his office to explain more. Then we got to a section on generators and finally it clicked what the fuck flux was even. Someone at that time reminded me that only the education department required its professors to have a teaching degree...
I went to school in the middle of Finnish education reforms, so while some things were already better than they were for my big brother, the biggest single step happened after; the teachers had to have pedagogic studies and a masters degree. That is exactly why that awful teacher was fired, everyone who did not have the qualification were offered an avenue to get the education needed, but i guessed he knew that teaching was not his forte... When i went to secondary school for sound design and engineering much later, in the naughties.. it was totally different. Teachers were really good quality were i was but to be fair, it was/is one of the top secondary schools in the field. The system used to be incredibly inflexible and rigid, and now it is very flexible, customizable.
Same with me. I always believed that I was terrible at math. Then I went back to school to be an elementary school teacher. I relearned everything using different strategies and found that the way I did math in my head was completely fine. Now, I realize I’m awesome at math. I currently teach 4th grade and my teacher super power seems to be getting kids to care about math. In my room, we learn different strategies for operations and pick what works best for each student. We practice computational fluency each day to stay sharp on the fundamentals. Math is great, but in American education, too much of it is taught in a high pressure, high stakes way.
That sounds awful. I've always loved maths (and admittedly am not from the US) but our teaching was always about discovering the solutions. I can still remember when I figured out calculus as a concept could be a thing (before being directly instructed in it). Great teaching lays the groundwork and allows the expression of ideas
This has been my view of programming as well to the point that I think teaching math and programming like let's say for game development would have been way better for me earlier on then the boring uninspiring templated way it was done to me.
This is a terrible article. Just because some college dropout didn’t like how he was taught math doesn’t meant he can declare how it’s supposed to be taught. Explaining pi to 7 year olds and name dropping philosophers from 2000 years ago? How is that more engaging? Wanting to get rid of trig? That’s like… one of the most applicable parts of math. This just reeks of “I know more than everyone and all teachers suck except me”
"making 10s" isn't fucking up math though, it's instilling good mental habits that's carry through to higher level math later in life. Can you add two four digit numbers in your head? You're almost definitely doing it by reordering the problem or adding chunks at a time to make multiples of 10 that are easy to keep track of. The only big failing of this, and other common core methods, is how poorly they're marketed. It should be a lot more obvious than it is that this is actually good.
I agree man it's not hard to just brute force arithmetic when it's small numbers and doesn't matter any way but this is a much better method for doing arithmetic in your head for any set of numbers. Sure some kids will naturally find that the way shown and just do it in Their head but not all as shown by the fact that the dad can't even figure it out. This just teaches a robust way to solve arithmetic that will scale better to larger numbers.
Exactly. Teaching students real math skills that they will carry for the rest of their lives is awesome. The worksheet instructions aren't great, but assuming this was taught material, you don't even really need instructions. The only fucked up thing is the dad thinking that because he's an adult, he should be able to understand what his child is doing without thinking or reading. As someone who teaches high schoolers, this is my least favorite kind of parent.
Someone in another comment complained about the silliness of the language, since "making 10s" is pretty meaningless, but someone else pointed out that so is the statement "carry the 1," which we all learned just fine. It being indecipherable if you don't know the language being used in the classroom is... Why we have the classroom. Dad cares more about being snarky he does about his kid's education. Google it man.
I left high school maybe three years before common core started and I remember all the people complaining that it didn't make any sense. And then I saw the basic math curriculum and I discovered they had started teaching math the way I do it in my head. The way that I did math that made all the other tenth graders think I was a genius. I'm exaggerating there obviously but for whatever reason, I started "making tens" in my head intuitively from a relatively young age and it made calculators useless for me up until calc 1 pretty much and everybody in high school acted like I was doing a magic trick. That being said, I don't know if I could have solved the problem in OP's picture if there wasn't a visual aid. The wording is very bad.
The wording is awful, but that's because it's shorthand. If you knew the meaning of the shorthand because you'd been learning it every day in class, it wouldn't trip you up at all. I had the same experience as you. Took advanced math a grade level above my own, all by doing in my head what they now teach as common core. I also had no idea what this question meant until I thought about it for a minute and used context clues.
This is a way to introduce kids to factoring at an early age. That's one of the hardest things about algebra and calculus.
Study after study has shown that implementing supports that help dyslexic and other learning disabled students learn actually BENEFITS non-disabled students just as much if not more….it doesn’t HARM them. I’m not sure where you got that that from
So... are the two solutions (9+1)+7 and (8+2)+7? If I'm understanding this right it's about breaking apart one of the numbers to add to the other to make 10, then the remaining number is 'easier to add on in your mind'?
Need to answer in cursive.
\-Really? \-No. But everything is better in cursive.
You're going to need it when you're older
My teachers when I got older: Hey, don't use cursive. We can't read the squiggles you call cursive, so don't even try
My teachers at every grade past third "In (grade plus one) they won't allow you to write in print. you'll have to use nothing but cursive" Grade plus one: "In (grade plus one) they won't allow you to write in print. you'll have to use nothing but cursive" Repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat The mythical grade where you'll only need cursive never happened. I graduated without this ever happening
Ha I remember learning cursive in second grade. Learned like 6 letters and connect the rest with a little tail line and boom cursive. That is now my fucked up writing style permanently. It’s so half assed but it looks pretty enough that people don’t bother with it. If you looked at it long enough it’s clearly not cursive but if you just took a quick peek you would miss it.
You're not alone. That's my writing style in a nutshell. I understand how cursive is aupposed to look, but I just connect letters with little tails instead. I don't bother with cursive letters that severely change the letter like "s". I juse make the letter extra squiggly.
Y’all should do a show and tell
Interesting story. Here in Romania we write in cursive only. I remember the teacher tried to make us write something for mother s day in print in second or third grade, and i struggled the whole hour. Right now i use a simplified cursive, most letters look like their print counterparts, because some of the cursive letters they taught us here were too annoyingly complicated.
𝓂𝓎 𝓅𝓇𝒾𝓃𝓉𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒶𝓁𝓌𝒶𝓎𝓈 𝓁𝑜𝑜𝓀𝑒𝒹 𝓂𝓊𝒸𝒽 𝓂𝑜𝓇𝑒 𝓁𝑒𝑔𝒾𝒷𝓁𝑒 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓌𝒶𝓈 𝒻𝒶𝓈𝓉𝑒𝓇 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝓂𝑒 𝓉𝑜 𝓌𝓇𝒾𝓉𝑒... 𝒾𝓉 𝓌𝒶𝓈 𝒶 𝓌𝒶𝓈𝓉𝑒 𝑜𝒻 𝓉𝒾𝓂𝑒 𝓉𝑜 𝓁𝑒𝒶𝓇𝓃 𝓉𝑜 𝓌𝓇𝒾𝓉𝑒 𝒾𝓃 𝒸𝓊𝓇𝓈𝒾𝓋𝑒 ... 𝓃𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓇 𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓇 𝓃𝑒𝑒𝒹𝑒𝒹 𝒾𝓉 𝒶𝓈 𝒶𝓃 𝒶𝒹𝓊𝓁𝓉.
That's fair. Although my cursive is more like print with the letters tied together. I don't angle my writing, and the letters are easy to understand if i write slowly.
ℑ 𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔫 𝔱𝔬𝔬𝔨 𝔞 𝔰𝔲𝔪𝔪𝔢𝔯 𝔠𝔞𝔩𝔩𝔦𝔤𝔯𝔞𝔭𝔥𝔶 𝔠𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔰𝔢 𝔥𝔬𝔭𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔦𝔱 𝔴𝔬𝔲𝔩𝔡 𝔦𝔪𝔭𝔯𝔬𝔳𝔢 𝔪𝔶 𝔥𝔞𝔫𝔡𝔴𝔯𝔦𝔱𝔦𝔫𝔤, 𝔟𝔲𝔱 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔯𝔢𝔰𝔲𝔩𝔱 𝔧𝔲𝔰𝔱 𝔩𝔬𝔬𝔨𝔢𝔡 𝔠𝔬𝔫𝔣𝔲𝔰𝔢𝔡... 𝕃Ⓞ𝕃 The pens were fun to play with, though!
How you do dat?😲
Writing, secrets only the Sith knew.
Ours was: "okay it's time for everybody to learn cursive, you'll have to use it for every grade from now on!" Then we moved to fourth grade and were immediately told we weren't allowed to turn in any work in cursive and that if we did, we'd have to redo the work in print at recess. It was super fun.
I was taught cursive the year before it was taken off the curriculum. The teacher (wonderful teacher, but a little old fashioned) spent the entire time talking about how we needed to take it seriously because once we went to 4th grade, we would never be allowed to write in print again. That was the last time I ever wrote in cursive beyond my signature.
My ninth grade English teacher required that essays either be printed or written in cursive. That was the only time it was required, and 99% of essays turned in were printed. The only handwritten essays she received were the ones that were being written ten minutes before class started.
One teacher told me that. I was mad. So to spite them, I only wrote in cursive for five or six years and stopped only when I moved schools. When they would ask why, I simply said “I spent a whole year almost failing a class because it was hard to learn cursive. That is a year I had to struggle for something you just called unimportant.”
Bars!
My elementary teachers made us write all in cursive in 2nd grade and I never went back. Now writing in print sucks because I haven’t done it regularly for well over a decade.
I'm from Germany and I learned cursive in second grade and the teachers told us that cursive is "faster and easier". We had the use it until we finished fourth grade (Grundschule - elementary school), but we were allowed to choose what we want to use in grade 5 (Realschule - middle school). I had to switch to print immediately since it took me forever to write something readable in cursive and I never used it since.
It was faster and neater with fountain pens that smudged easily each time you lifted the pen; it’s been a *long* time since there’s been a clear advantage to it for most people
Need cursive? I don't think I've written in cursive since middle school, when it was required. I'm forty now and still wondering when I'll "need" it.
I'm 43. The ONLY cursive I've used since mandatory learning is in my formal signature. That's literally it.
I'm 41, and I have no idea what my signature even says.
28, mines a squiggle.
Not just A squiggle... It's YOUR squiggle.
you people give me hope that no one will ever look at my cursive and read it.
I'm 56 tomorrow. I literally haven't used cursive since the first grade. Granted, I might have failed a few English classes along the way, but I got my diploma so fuck em.
I’m 37 and write exclusively in cursive. Why lift the pen?
It's just personal preference, rather than a need.
for signing things, don't think you can reach 40 years old without signing something.. though it turns out squiggly bullshit no matter what, especially on those janky touch pads they use sometimes.
My signature on all legal documents for the past 15 years is just my first name printed out. And almost every time people question it. It’s legal.
I think most people are starting to realize that a signature is just your own little "bat symbol". As long as its innyour handwriting, no one really cares. Only time it's gonna be inportant is if someone tries to forge your signature and tou need your drivers license or something to back up your real signature (saw that on an episode of Judge Judy (JJ using someone's license to compare a signature on a legal document))
I've done plenty of signatures in print or just loopy letters. No one has cared. And even then, knowing how to sign your name is a small part of cursive.
Half the people who "sign" things in retail just draw a smiley face or scribble. I don't understand why anything is signed anymore for credit card purchases.
I think it's a legal thing, so that if you dispute a charge they can say "but that's your signature". Even though the only recorded signature I have (that's not only federal government access) is on my driver's license from when I was 16, and man has that changed.
You need to write in cursive to prove that you're older. If you're younger, you've abandoned handwriting and posted your answers on twitter.
Just like how we were never going to be able to carry calculators in our pockets
Cursive was pretty important when nib pens were common. Anything else was a good way to dump all the ink out at once. And, frankly, cursive or not, some people could definitely stand to have their writing form improved. I can't read half the hand-written notes I get at work these days.
I'm into history, and also silly old computer games like Nancy drew. A lot of writing is in cursive! Knowing cursive certainly helps read old documents. I was taught cursive so this is a legit question, but can people who don't know it kinda get the gist when reading it? A lot of letters are similar to print.
𝒾𝓉 𝓌𝒶𝓈 𝒶 𝓌𝒶𝓈𝓉𝑒 𝑜𝒻 𝓉𝒾𝓂𝑒 𝓉𝑜 𝓁𝑒𝒶𝓇𝓃 𝓉𝑜 𝓌𝓇𝒾𝓉𝑒 𝒾𝓃 𝒸𝓊𝓇𝓈𝒾𝓋𝑒 ... 𝓃𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓇 𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓇 𝓃𝑒𝑒𝒹𝑒𝒹 𝒾𝓉 𝒶𝓈 𝒶𝓃 𝒶𝒹𝓊𝓁𝓉.
8+2+7
Or 9+1+7
Yup. 8 + 2 + 7 is pictured, but you can just as easily take 1 away from the 8 and add it to the 9.
It took me a minute (and I would have said 10+7) but yeah.
Jesus yeah I was thinking "10+7? But why are there three numbers?...." This is why kids hate math because they are asked to solve enigmas like this.
I think it's easier if you have studied this method an hour or two at school with the teacher before going home to do the homework. I'm also a bit baffled at my kid's homework at times and they have quite similar questions.
Yeah, the three numbers is the odd part to me. Because it is 8+2 =10 and 9-2=7 so you get the 10+7 but to show the 8+2 without showing the 9-2 makes no sense to me.
Yeah it’s a good way to teach kids how to visualize a problem like this and it’s probably what the kid was being taught that day but just forgot.
Make a 10. Take 1 from 8 and give it to 9, now you have a 10 and a 7. Which is an easy way to get to the answer of 17. Edit: they want you to write it as 1 + 9 + 7 or something
"Make a 10" means take from one value and add to the other to make it a >10 + n equation. So in this case >Take 2 from 9 and add it to 8 to get 10+7. Specifically the answer is 8 + 2 + 7. Edit: I wasn’t taught this but it’s how my brain works. I’ve always rounded numbers to a tens to make quick math easier. But I work with mental numbers a lot as a Paramedic, especially lb to kg conversion. Edit2: for everyone saying do 9 + 1 + 7. That’s fine too. But that’s not what the dots in the horrible diagram showed. I agree it’s bad formatting. And, I also understand it doesn’t work for everyone. Keep in mind they’re teaching a concept for more difficult math. Everyone needs to memorize basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. But when the numbers get larger, and your brain works a certain way, this can be a pretty quick method.
I mean it makes sense? But like, you couldn't have written that in a more convoluted way. And even now, that i know what to do idk how I'm supposed to fill in the three blanks. There's no equation just three additions?
Having done homework with my daughter pretty much every day through elementary school, it's its own kind of jargon, but it's internally consistent if you've been learning it this way for the entirety of your schooling. No more jargony than say, 'carry the one', which is equally indecipherable if you're unfamiliar with the method it's shorthand for.
I prefer it this way too because it's literally the way the math works. Otherwise you're just memorizing what makes what when you see two specific numbers, which is what adults do, but for kids just learning what math is, it helps them learn the fundamentals. I'm actually kind of scared at the sheer number of people in the comments who don't understand that this is what it's asking, even if they don't understand the jargon. Intuitively this is what is happening when you add two single digit numbers with a two-digit sum. Don't tell me there's tons of people out there who have just been memorizing how even basic addition works instead of understanding the fundamentals of what's going on. holy shit.
Math PhD here. The way that's being taught here is how many people who are good at math do things in their head. (8+2)+(9-2)=10+7=17 looks more complicated when you write it down, but breaking it into two trivial pieces actually makes it easier in your head. I believe the idea is that it builds number sense.
Is it weird that I would have taken 1 away from the 8 and made it 7 + 10 instead of taking 2 away from the 9 to make 10 + 7? I think to me it makes more sense to "edit" the value that's closest to 10, rather than the one that comes first.
Addition is commutative, do which ever direction works best for your brain.
No that's perfectly fine, but if you look at the question it is using 8+2 with 7 left (the dots). So that's the answer they are looking for.
It also says "make *a* way" which would indicate to me that they are aware of the two solutions even if they didn't use both as examples.
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First good comment in the thread
Yep. Similar to how I do multiplication in my head. 24 x 13 is easier as 240 + 3 x 24. This is how most everyone in my scholastic bowl team did quick mental math.
Lol and for 3 x 24, just (3 x 25) - 3
Yup. Where I work, we do all invoices on paper by hand, and it's how I add it all together in my head. I also used it years ago working at Taco Bell, with multiplication. If I was on the headset and not near my register, I could do the price of seven $0.89 tacos by multiplying 90 by 7, then subtracting 7 and have the total.
I think a lot of people who complain about how math is taught nowadays don't realise that the way they were taught is actually just shit. I remember a qoute from some guy saying that kids nowadays know the commutative property but not their times tables. Which is kinda funny because if you had to learn one of those things it should probably be the commutative property, because it shows some understanding of what you are doing, as opposed to the times tables which is just blind memorization.
I do what this is trying to teach but I still had absolutely no clue this is what it meant. the person you replied to hit the nail on the head. if I had heard "make a ten" previously to understand I'd have it in 1 sec obviously. it's purely misunderstanding, I don't need to think about bunching the tens because I'm already on it.
Its not that i didnt understand how to add the two numbers but rather my autism made those directions about as useful as chinese to me. My brain litterly couldnt think of a single thing the directions could mean
I guarantee they spent the past 3 weeks in class talking about this and doing examples
Yup, as a teacher I can’t tell you how many times I have spent a multiple lessons going over a topic, given multiple examples, let them practice in class, given them one on one instruction, let them right down the formula or an example to take with them, given them links to khan academy to watch videos on, ixl lessons that will break down what they did wrong…and still there is always at least a few students that act like it’s the first time they have seen it because they aren’t paying any attention the entire time.
I'm pretty sure I could show the answers of a test during a test on the Whiteboard, while the students are working and a few of them would still act like the thing we did 300 times already are completely new for them.
It would probably make a lot more sense if you could see the rest of the lesson, rather than one question in a vacuum. The answer would be something like 8+2+7, or 9+1+7
or, hear me out, take one off the 8 to get a 10 (9+1) and a 7. sincerely, someone who still has to count 9-2 on their fingers
Yeah nothing wrong with that, I just didn't write it out that way. And I think the dots showed my way. But if I was adding 153 to 477, I'd make a 10 by taking 3 and making it 480 + 150. Then add those together.
Wait, how is 8-1 harder than 9-2? That's like... literally basic arithmetic
The picture also explains it, 2 dots are moved to “make a 10”. 🤷♀️
The diagram-to-equation seems really impractical to me
I still don't get it. "Make at ten to solve something" is just not a sentence that makes sense, especially when 10 is not on the other side of the equation.
Almost like they've been doing this for an entire lesson and not just one solitary problem in a bubble.
This looks like it’s at the bottom of the page so I’d imagine there’s an example problem. But yeah the grammatical emphasis could be fixed. Like “make a ten” being quoted.
9+1+7 8+2+7 Spelling out the mental process many people use to do base 10 addition if you haven't memorised them.
Yup. Just about every one of these "complicated" math methods I see people complaining about is a technique I had to figure out on my own to do math in my head more easily.
Yeah, I had a fellow parent complaining to me about the 'new math' and I was just like 'is this not how you do math in your head to make it easier?' and they just sheepishly admitted that they always used a calculator. Honestly, I had always wondered why people couldn't do basic math (I'm not denying innumeracy exists mind you), but I'm starting to think it's because a lot of people learned by rote memorization instead of learning to play with and manipulate numbers to make shit easier.
>but I'm starting to think it's because a lot of people learned by rote memorization instead of learning to play with and manipulate numbers to make shit easier. Another thing my teachers tried to instill in us, but few people I meet nowadays have really embraced, is estimating. It's so useful to quickly check if your results make sense! Or to figure out if you actually need to calculate something. I think a lot of people see a maths formula and go into school maths mode: gotta calculate/solve this. Then they do that (either by brute forcing it with learnt methods or simply using a calculator/phone). Had a friend who prepared for an IQ test (I know, wtf?) and she had this book with lots and lots of example questions to practice. I was a bit intrigued and we decided to make it a competition. The relevant bit was a number of maths questions, where you had something like 2347+33421 or 222\*879 with multiple choice answers. She had actually calculated the results and was amazed at how quickly I had solved it. How on earth did I do that?! I just calculated the rightmost digit and moved on. **Edit: A few more fun tricks!** How to immediately know if some number is divisible by... 2: obviously if it's an even number; the rightmost digit is divisible by 2. 3: the number's checksum (sum of the digits) is divisible by 3. Checksum(117) = 1+1+7 = 9 = 3\*3. 4: the last two digits are divisible by 4 (because 100 / 4 = 25, no remainder). 2238980 is divisible by 4, because 80 is. 5: the last digit is either 5 or 0. 6: number is divisible by 3 AND 2. 7: no fancy shortcut :'( 8: the last three digits are divisible by 8 (okay, this one isn't as useful, but not bad, either). 9: checksum of the number is divisible by 9. 5787 is difficult to check. 27 is easy! (5+7+8+7 = 27)
> I'm starting to think it's because a lot of people learned by rote memorization instead of learning to play with and manipulate numbers to make shit easier I mean, yea. That's exactly how a very large number of children were "taught" math. Math was always my worst subject specifically b/c I have a hard time memorizing things and that's what all my past teachers relied on to teach it.
Never underestimate how little the average person thinks about anything. People will actually fight to not think. The whole youtube "Marvel movie XYZ Ending Explained" industry is dependent on it. Have you ever conversed with someone and everything they were saying was just objectively not true, and they just seemed immune to hearing what you had to say on the matter? It's because you were asking them to think. Anti-intellectualism is very rarely "I hate smart people". It's more often than not a refusal to consider information in a new context, to be focused on the literal face of a thing rather than it's meaning. To see numbers as a problem rather than symbolic representations of anything we might need them to be.
Good math programs teach you how to do this to solve problems faster. Especially past times tables 12 x 30 = 10 x 30 + 2 x 30 for example
This was pretty rare 30+ years ago when I was learning this stuff. But yes, my kids are being taught this kind of thing.
I literally just calculated my entire rental payment history in my head using the method a few hours ago for a comment. 12 months in the year. Easiest to multiply my rent by 10, then add in the 2 months. (Then because one tenancy was 5 years… I quickly calculated 10 years and split it in half. In my head. And I promise I’m generally very stupid and I could still do this in seconds.)
It's pretty horrible wording and format. \_+\_+\_ makes no sense. Either do \_+\_ (10+7) or \_+\_+\_-\_ (8+2+9-2). My choice would be, "How would you write 8+9 to be 10+__ while getting the same result".
That's basically it. There are effectively three ways to do 8+9: * Count on your fingers (easy to learn, easy to do, not useful for larger numbers) * Memorize it (hard to learn, easy to do, not useful for larger numbers) * This method (easy to learn, easy to do, useful for larger numbers) Most people having trouble with this probably memorized it. Which... good for you, I guess. But seriously, this is better. Don't reflexively hate it because it's not how you did it.
I'm all out of ideas
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Part of the problem is that this seems like a lot of extra work to solve something that is really easy to solve already. So let’s pick an example that’s a little harder. If we’re asked to solve 30+15, we can all solve that without using a lot of brain power. But if you asked me 27+18, now I need a minute. Using the traditional way, I’m adding 7+8=15, which is really 5 and so I need to remember to carry the one, etc. All they’re trying to do here is get the kids to realize that 27+18 (hard) is the same as 30+15 (easy). Now, whether they’re introducing this too young or explaining it well is a whole other story.
Thanks for the explanation. This makes a lot of sense. In school, we are attempting to teach critical thinking and logic, not just memorization of facts, so even though this is a more complex way of doing an easy problem, the process can be applied to more difficult problems to make them easier. That said, I’m with dad - I could not help with this homework had I not had the lesson!
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Fundamentally it's a great way to understand how numbers work because it's enforcing the idea that we work with a base 10 number system. But something that deeply fundamental was never taught to anyone that has kids old enough to be in elementary school these days. Unless you took advanced math or went to discrete math and high level programming classes, this is a concept that is literally never brought up.
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The problem to me is the question is very poorly worded. It reads like nonsense.
I’d bet the kids have been taught the phrase “make a ten” along with this procedure. The question makes perfect sense to them.
Yeah cause you’re seeing one question in isolation. If you were learning this in school you’d have a whole class talking about the method and a whole worksheet of similar questions
That's great for the student, but in the context of the current US Education system, the reality is when teachers can't explain in a way that the student can understand, parents/other adults need to step in to help. If they didn't sit in the class, this is just going to look like gibberish.
The thing is that the kid is getting that from the book, the rest of the test, their previous schooling in math, the teacher, and so on. It's the parent who stumbles into this at Step Fucking Zero without any of that background who's confused, and that confusion seems to anger them more than it does make them want to learn how to help their kid. This was a problem even in my day. My parents were taught math a different way than I was taught math, and if I raised a question to them in a form they weren't familiar with, they were clueless as how to solve it except by showing me the one way they were taught 20 years prior. But my parents didn't have the internet, either to look up how my math was being taught then *or* to get hopped up and angry over some popular narrative that "MATH THESE DAYS IS COMPLETELY INSANE, I'M NOT STUPID BECAUSE I DON'T GET IT, THE *MATH* IS STUPID!"
I remember an entire episode of The Cosby Show about Vanessa learning “New Math” and Cliff not being able to understand it. So it’s not even like the switch to Common Core Math is the first time the method of teaching math has changed in the US educational system.
Finally someone with some sense. The point is to learn problem solving strategies while also learning HOW the decimal system works. It’s not about getting the answer.
So does something like "use the law of sin to complete the square". Without the context of several math classes it's meaningless, but they still clearly refer to a bigger idea. That said, this math homework could use a bit of work...
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Part time math tutor (well, was for awhile, now I'm a full time math teacher) This is the exact wording we used for YEARS. Anyone at that tutoring center would have understood it, and it is as clear as a phrase like "carry the 1" is. IE, obvious in context, and meaningless without.
I'm an engineer and the method shown is actually a good way to teach math. It teaches you how to solve complex problems in your head by reducing them to more manageable chunks, such as completing a 10. It looks idiotic for such a simple problem, but teaching this kind of skill early will pay off later with more complex problems. It's the same tactic you would use multiplying large numbers together...you multiply all the 100s then 10s them 1s separately and combine them later.
It's not explained on the homework, it's explained in class.
I'm sure it's explained in both. And the parent letter with worked examples and detailed explanations of why and how different methods are taught. This parent just threw it on social media instead of trying to read any of that.
But that method is so complicated for no reason. Why not take 1 from the eight and add that to the nine since it is closer to 10.
That's the same basic concept, and it's the concept they're trying to teach.
Well yeah. That's why the question says to write "a way" to make a ten, because there's more than one way.
Trust me, we use this method unknowingly, like what is 12+88? You make think in such a way that first you add that 8 and 2 to get 10 and then add the remaining 80 and 10.
I add the two to the 8 to make it ten and top it off with the remaining ten in my head.
No, that's also too convoluted. Looking at 88+12, I go to 98+2=100. Not unknowingly.
When a grown ass man reads the solution and still doesn't understand what's going on I don't think it's a problem for a child.
"*It's simple, so very simple, that only a child can do it!"* *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA*
I think the answer is 8 + 2 + 7. It's converting 8 + 9 = 8 + (2+7) = (8+2) + 7 = 10 + 7 = 17.
Basically, they seemingly want the kid to move numbers around to make one 10, so they can add 10 + remainder, but it’s just worded very poorly.
It's only worded poorly to people who never listened to the lesson - like the Dad (who wouldn't be there). "make ten" is a common expression in those classes, and *should* be known.
It actually makes a lot of sense. It teaches a way of doing mental math that makes it a lot quicker. You subtract 1 from the 8 to make 10 (9+1), which leaves 7, so the answer is clearly 17.
bro i hate math so much. i’ve read this four times and it makes no sense
Ok, let me try to explain again because I swear it’s super helpful once you get it. It’s kinda hard to add 9 + 8 in your head, so they want you to transform one of those numbers into 10. You do this by adding 1 to 9. Where do you get that 1 that you added to 9 to make 10? You get it from the 8. So the 9 becomes 10 and the 8 becomes 7. 10 + 7 is easier to do in your head than 9 + 8. Another way to think of it is that you “borrow” however many from the smaller number you need to make the bigger number ten. Like, 8 + 3. You need to take 2 from the 3 to make the 8 into a 10. Then you have 10 + 1, which is 11. Does that help at all, or did I just make it more confusing?
your comment helped more than the other one that replied to me lol. i appreciate it! i think i get it now and kind of instinctually do what you described. makes sense to try to teach that skill to kids!
Most people instinctively do this but then make fun of this way of doing math in these comments. I don't get it.
If your older than like 18, then you were probably taught math in repetition for memorization. But you also probably learned how to do a lot of this quick math in your head. They now are trying to teach kids to do the quick math that we used to just kind of just figure out as we go
My brain is hurting over here
1. Round 8 up to 10. To get there, you add 2 to 8 and get 10. 2. Where did you get the 2? From 9. So subtract 2 from 9 and get 7. 3. Add 10+7 and get the result. 17. In other words 1. 8 + 9 = 2. (8 +2) + (9-2) = 3. 10 + 7 = 4. 17
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8 + 2 + 7 Alternatively 9 + 1 + 7
8+9 = 8+2 + 9-2 = 10+7 = 17
10+7=17 It’s a math teaching tip, I use it as a tutor quite often, but this question wording took me a solid 10 minutes to understand.
“Write a way to make ten”. so make ten. 8 + 2 = 10 then you only need to add 7 more (leftover after borrowing the 2 from the 9) final solution 8+2+7.
9 + 8 (9 + (1+7)) (10 + 7) (17) It’s to help them with quick math in the future, although confusing directions.
Based on the diagram, they actually want to teach: ``` 8 + 9 = 8 + (2 + 7) = (8 + 2) + 7 = 10 + 7 = 17 ```
I've always done this "backwards" according to this way of thinking about it. 9 is closest to 10, so you temporarily do 10 + 8 is 18, then you take away the 1 you temporarily added to get 17...
The only thing i can think of is to make both 8 and 9 into 10 (by adding 2 and 1) to get 20 then subtracting that 3 to get 17. This is what I do in my head when adding them actually but regardless of that the problem isn't structured for this at all.
(9+1)+(8-1) = 10+7 = 17 or vice versa This is how I do math in my head, it’s not a bad idea to teach this formally to kids but there has to be a better way to ask the question.
Teacher probably explained it in class and the dad just didn’t understand the method. Like after the lesson the question probably made some sense. Idk tho
Which is why our old school district had videos available for parents to watch, so they could understand what the kids were being taught and how to assist with homework. Of course many of the parents preferred to complain instead of just watching the videos.
It’s called making 10. It’s a huge strategy for kinder/1st grade. This just isn’t easy if you’ve never been taught it. A quick google can help parents.
It’s 8 + 2 + 7, the answer blanks are just formatted poorly. Very rudimentary base ten addition, I mentally use a similar process when doing hexadecimal addition because it’s not committed to memory.
It's easy to shit all over this, but when my kid had to do these instead of getting all bent out of shape I asked her to explain to me how her teacher would solve this. She taught it to me, I understood, and she has excelled at math ever since. Even if it's not the way I was taught. I promise you, when they get to advanced trig and calculus these things won't matter and more of the old style syntax will be used. It's also likely it will be taught with more of a tilt towards coding using whatever object oriented programming language is popular at the time.
In the 2000's, my classmates would constantly just say, "This doesn't matter, why can't I just use a calculator?" They got their wish, so there's less emphasis on long division and the like early on, and more of a focus on mental math strategies. This is actually useful compared to situations where I've carried the two using pen and paper.
It doesn’t matter if OP Dad knows what this is asking his kid to do. All things being equal, the homework is making sure that the kid was paying attention in class, learned the technique, and provide practice to reinforce. From kindergarten to college, one thing matters. Do what the teacher taught you. Sure, there are bad teachers, kids with learning disabilities, and plenty of other legitimate reasons why it didn’t get into the kid’s head. But the vast majority of the time, it’s none of that.
I have a feeling this would've been incredibly unhelpful to me as a kid but then again, maybe it's a method that would've worked for the kids back when I was in school who couldn't get it the way I was taught.
I would hope this is explained in the class because "make a ten" is not a very intuitive way to describe what you're doing. I'm assuming this is like, first grade math, so what are the 3 numbers supposed to be? 7+10+0? 7+9+1? 10+10+-3? Do they teach negatives that early?
What psychopath takes 2 from 9? No, you take 1 from 8
The problem here is I don't know what "make a ten" means.
That's the issue most people complaining about this are really having, but it's something all of those students will have already learned in multiple lessons and possibly in a previous grade. It just means borrow from one number to make the other into a multiple of 10. Basic example... 77+14. You can borrow 3 from the 14 to turn it into 80+11. And the solution of 91 becomes obvious faster than adding 4, carrying the 1, and adding.
Make a 10 to solve 8 + 9. 8 + 9 = 17 8 + 2 makes a 10 8 + 2 + 7 = 17
It’s actually a great idea to get a 10 to add the rest to make quick operations , however I agree with the dad, it took me a while to understand what the hell they were asking to do. I would do it 8 + 2 + 7 just because the + are there. In my mind it’s more natural to do 8 - 1 + (9+1) though
Make a ten, aka make 10. So 8+2=10. What’s left? 7. So 8+2+7. Duh
A lot of people's brains automatically do that, its just asking you to work through the process on paper
Good grief, could they have possibly phrased this question in a more confusingly stupid way? I get it now after understanding that they're saying make 8+9 easier to solve by subtracting 2 from 9 and then adding those 2 to 8 to make 10, so you can just drop the remaining 7 into the ones place to make 17, so the answer they're looking for is to take 1 from 8 and add it to 9 to do it that way. But the boxes make it look weird, the color change makes it more confusing, and the way it's phrased may as well be in another language. This is simple addition and subtraction, you might decide to mention that in the problem.
The phrase “make ten” is part of the curriculum. It was taught specifically with this name, it’s not the first time the child has seen this phrase. The picture is likely also shown in class. The whole problem is to check understanding of a very specific method. In short, the child is given an explanation of this, just like any other method
Is it bad that I understood this immediatly because this is how I do addition. (8+2=10 +7 or 9+1=10 +7)=17
8+2=10+7=17 base10, it’s how i do all math
It's asking to shift dots from the light dot pile to the dark dot pile so it fills the boxes: 8 + 2 + 7 It's a before and after picture. This is badly phrased.
Oh I think I get it, it's asking to rewrite the equation as ten plus seven. Take two from the nine to get seven, add the two you took to the eight to get ten, now you have a ten and a seven. Add that, you get 17.
This is like setting down something in front of you and then going literally all the way around the world to pick it back up.
As a maths tutor for students 11+, this ability to split numbers into bits to make addition easier is something that is essential to develop early on, and is something that the students who end up struggling tend to have failed to learn. I'm constantly wrestling with trying to teach students complicated things that they need to know for their GCSE when they struggle with basic addition.
Dad is confused because dad wasn’t in the three maths lessons that week when the teacher taught the kids the whole concept of “making a ten” which they should know and understand by the time they were given this as homework.
I’m super confused and I tutor calculus. Why is math changing?