Learning more about learning - Part 2: Childs play

Carrying on from the theme of learning, I'm now going to try and take you back to your years as a child. How many of you remember how you learnt to count? Or add? Or subtract? At what stage did the word "Three" become more than just a word. We all take for granted that three is a representation of a value/number/quantity that can be changed by adding, subtracting or dividing another number/value/quantity, but how do you teach it to someone? It's so basic to you and me as adults and is used almost every day by all of us when counting our change, paying for a loaf of bread or even counting down the days to christmas, that you forget how difficult it can be for someone to grasp the concept at all.

I'm going to be sneaky here and steal the ideas of a guy I used to work with. As far as I'm concerned everything this man said was pure genius, whether it be advice for general life, how to help teach kids or even if he was using his wit to mock you in some way. I will show you exactly what I mean by using one of his methods to place you in the shoes of a child who is struggling to learn addition and subtraction.

You are all familiar with  the numbers 1-10 (I hope). But then again, teaching a child a bunch of numbers is easy. My nephew isn't even 2 years old yet and he's counting "1,2,3,4,6,". Granted there's a bit of work to be done there, but come on! He's barely two! This isn't where kids struggle. They struggle in making those words represent values that can be changed.

What's 4+6?

Chances are you jumped straight to the number 10. Why wouldn't you? It's basic maths.
A kid will most likely start at 4 and then either out loud or using their fingers start counting upwards: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9...10!
"This is easy!" you cry. "You should be doing these things in your head!"
Where you have over the years learnt more than you realise about numbers, pairs of numbers, groups of numbers and so on; a child has been given a list of words and been told to add them together to make another word...that is seemingly obvious.

Here is the activity I am going to get you to do:

From this moment, numbers are a thing of the past. You're far too familiar with them and any question I ask you will get in a matter of seconds. Instead I'm going to use words...

The first word represents the number 1
the second word represent the number 2
and so forth

Here are our word numbers:

Mary - had - a - little - lamb - its - fleece - was - white - as





What's Had + Fleece?
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Did you work it out in your head? Or did you start at Mary and count 1, 2, 3, 4... until you reached 'Fleece'
Come on this is easy! You should be doing this in your head!!

I suppose the answer you came up with was nine right? If it was; slap yourself right now for failing to add two single digit numbers together. You want the answer? The answer is "White". Take away the links that we are all so familiar with and we struggle to do even basic arithmetic. Now imagine the words weren't even on this page and someone had told you them. "Don't use your fingers" they say. Now you have to run through mary had a little lamb in your head each time you want to figure it out making the process even slower! Consider this the next time you ask your children "What's 4 + 6" and they stand there for an age trying to work it out. You've just been reminded why they take so long.

We expect kids to pick up maths so quickly because we have developed links in our heads between numbers. We have seen visual representations. If I placed 3 dots on the floor I could arrange them in any way I wanted, but they will always be three. If I placed another 2 dots, I can see that there are 5, no matter how I arrange them. Everyone recognises the patterns on a dice. Nobody ever counts the number of dots on a dice to find out what they rolled...

It's these links that make it so easy for us as adults to manipulate numbers and we make up our own ones in our head as we grow up. For me 40 / 5 is easy. I can jump to the answer straight away. 36 / 6 another one. All these links that have "short-cuts" to the answer mean I don't have to work it out. Children who have yet to develop these links would struggle.

If you want to put yourself to the test I've left some maths problems for you below. Don't scroll up. Just use your head.



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1) Little + Had
2) Its + A
3) White - Little
4) Was - Its
5) Snow - Fleece

Remember to answer with the appropriate "word" not a number ;)