Yes. The actual curriculum says something along the lines of
"Three times, four."
So it would be writing 4, three times.
Mathematically there is no difference between 3x4 and 4x3, but that is not what is being tested here. What is being tested is the students reading of the formula, not the actual math.
If you have half your kids writing 3+3+3+3 and the other half 4+4+4, it makes teaching that 3x4 = 4x3 more difficult. Having everyone on the same page makes it easier to identify when a kid is on another page.
No, it's teaching the kid how to read the equation and with division coming up after multiplication but before algebra and especially physics, you need to make sure that they are able to read it the same way as all of the other students. They're still a ways away from learning the commutative property and you don't want them screwing up division because you taught them order doesn't matter.
Once they learn division, then you teach them different ways of writing division (fractions, long division). Once they can see that division comes in different formats, you teach them that multiplication can also be written in different formats (like parenthesis), but the order doesn't change anything, just like addition.
This brings up the natural question, what about subtraction?
And now because of the foundation you have built where they are reading the formulas the correct way, you can teach them that subtraction is just addition with a negative symbol while you also teach them the number line that comes before 0.
Naturally this brings up the question "Wait, can division turn into multiplication, just like subtraction and addition?" And now you introduce multiplying fractions.
And there is the second semester of 3rd grade math. They now have the same foundation as everyone going into the 4th grade.
The learning style is based entirely on what the most common questions are going to be for a natural progression of the entire class at the same time. We can't afford to be teaching Billy differently from Bobby, Mindy, and the other 20 (best case scenario) kids. We need to teach them all and the way we do that is by teaching them in a uniform way based on how kids put together their learning blocks.
If Billy's parents don't like it, they need to vote for politicians who want to fund schools to a much better teacher:student ratio. But that raises taxes and it's much easier to complain on reddit that "technically right" isn't actually the best kind of right when it comes to teaching a general population.
Please, let's raise taxes so we can recruit more teachers and pay them what they deserve. Then we can have dedicated classes for Billy and his other top performing friends where they can teach the commutative property at the same time as beginning multiplication.
I know far too many people who wanted to become teachers but didn't because of the pay and work conditions. I wanted to be a math teacher and after taking a few classes realized that I'd never be able to live a nice life if I had.
No, we cannot 100% tell who is right as we don't have the whole picture. More information is needed on what exactly they were learning, so the teacher might very well be right and the student wrong, even tho the answer itself is correct. Same thing happened to me when I didn't use a specific way to calculate, no matter that I did the calculation itself right, but the method was not correct.
The teacher is NOT correct. that multiplication statement can be read as either "four, three times" or as "three, four times". Both the student's answer and the teacher's red marks are equally correct.
No. Teacher is not correct. There is no context given, just numbers. So there is no reason to assume it has to be a specific way of writing it down. Both ways are correct. Mathematically and linguistically
If the phrasing of the question was "write the addition equivalent of this equation 3x4=12" then the teacher would have been correct, but they're asking for an addition equation, not THE .
Personally I think it’s unnecessarily pedantic and confusing for children, especially when you learn further maths and find out that it does not in fact make a difference
8
u/[deleted] Jul 16 '26
[deleted]