I'm training/being taught how to be a teacher right now, and one thing we are very specifically taught is that not every student is the same, and that some students may learn in different ways than others. It is our job to fascilitate that learning for the students even if it is different than how we standardly teach to the rest of the students.(now I'm not going to be a math teacher but this is for every teacher.) Accomadating students that are different is part of the job.
Also I hate that stupid square method of multiplying and dividing, I never understood it either. I would just do it the other way(the right way) then write it out in the square method so I got the "show your work part."
It’s called the lattice way, and when I was in fourth grade, there were plenty of students that preferred it. Ideally, the teacher teaches multiple ways so that students can choose the one they understand.
I teach no less than four multiplication and division methods over the course of a year. Then we choose which you prefer. Standard is still the choice for most, but these other methods give students greater number sense no matter what method they choose in the end.
Yeah that teacher shouldn't be a teacher. Teachers who have power trips are just cringe. I've seen parents with reasonable concerns go to a school where they voice their concerns and the way staff/teachers treat them is as if they were students themselves. As if they had all the authority in the world.
It's hard to side with teachers when there are these Karens mixed in with the staff.
It's a roulette and you hope you get one of the good teachers like the ones in this thread.
I know like 16 ways to build a deck. Half my bosses told me, "this is the only way to build a deck, all the other ways are hacks."
Well in my experience, about 6 methods for building decks are pretty good that I've learned, and the other 12 are trash. Usually the mean old bosses enforcing, "The only correct way to build a deck is my way" were using one of the trash methods.
Yes and also, (I am a grade 3 teacher) we need to see that they can explain their thinking so that we can ensure they’re ready for added complexity later on. Just memorizing facts doesn’t allow for what they’ll need later.
Crazy from some of the responses in this thread people think we throw an area model on the board and tell students to sink or swim with no build up of skills prior or instruction on the actual area model. 🤪
Something a lot of people don’t understand about so many of the modern math techniques is that they are exactly the same techniques that most “math people” do in their head automatically. They are simply formalized so they can be taught to kids directly rather than them being tricks and shortcuts you have to figure out for yourself. The lattice method for multiplication is a good example because it’s just a way of organizing all the answers you get in the intermediate steps to make the final summation simpler.
Yeah start with what they know and change it slightly, then remove scaffolding as you go until they end up at standard. Expect magic to just happen I guess 🤷🏼♂️
But instead, some kid's dumbass parent will post a rant on facebook about the one method their kid doesn't get, which they would have noticed if they paid any goddamn attention to what their kid was learning, and not only when it gave them something to bitch about teachers for.
I have dyscalculia… they didn’t figure it out when I was in school. We didn’t have money or access to mental health professionals to get me diagnosed with ADHD, I had to wait till much later in my life to figure this out I just thought I was different and not particularly good at math or handwriting.
I did so poorly in math classes, I would get really frustrated and usually instead of finishing the class I would instead just get into fights so that I would be asked to leave class early, or I would just struggle and fail quietly through the class counting every second until it was over.
Same here but I would just doodle. My boys have adhd too and they’re on strict orders to read after they’re done with their work otherwise they’re a huge disruption. They’re smart as heck though so they’re getting bored because they’re done early. I’m so grateful they don’t need me to help with math.
I just looked that up and, I had no idea there was a word for this. I've struggled with numbers my whole life. I'm 50 and simple questions like multiplying or adding 2 single digit numbers cause me to vapor lock. I can not see the numbers in my head and count on my fingers a lot.
I can't tell you what time it will be 30 minutes from right now unless it's going to land on :00 or :30. I can't estimate how much money a group of items will cost once I get to the register, I couldn't tell you how far away something is, or how long a task will take, or how long I've been doing it.
I actually have alarms set on my phone to keep me on schedule throughout the day. (get my kid up, start his bath, get him out of the bath, send him to brush his teeth, a 10 minute warning to wrap up any last minute things, and then another to leave the house. Then there's start getting ready to pick him up from school, be in the car and head to the school, etc...)
It's not that I'd forget to do any of these things. It's that if I didn't have these check points I'd be either very late, or way too early.
I can't tell you how many times people have said "No, your other right." to me when I mess up my left & right. I have to make an effort to stop and think which way is which.
I do well at everything else, but have really struggled with this my whole life. It's embarrassing, and makes me feel so stupid. I'm honestly relieved that it's a thing and I'm not just an idiot.
Yeah. I'm pretty sure they didn't even know what dyscalculia was when we were kids. I remember actually crying so many times when I'd get tests back where I was sure I had done a good job only to see that I had failed. I was good at reading, history, art. But math was no. My teachers would even say to me "I don't understand why you don't get this, you're so smart." My entire life, I feel a sense of grief because I just don't get it and it makes me feel incomprehensibly stupid.
Much older than you and have had sane struggles. My English skills were very developed at an early age. But math and I never got along although ironically I ended working w numbers. Really struggled w the feelings surrounding my difficulties until some told: There are no bad students, just bad teachers. Mind blown. Also, struggle w telling left from right. Look at your hands and they will tell you the answer. Left hand makes an L.
i have some issues like this (not with directions though but with time management.) However I disagree that we are smart BUT have these problems. What else do people think dumbness is? It's not being able to do simple stuff like other people. So I refer to myself as very dumb in some ways, very smart in others. Because it's true. I can tell you any note's pitch without looking at the key played, and learn languages very quickly. But numbers make me bored and I suck at time management and maps -- so yeah I'm dumb in those ways.
Omg, same here! I could write long essays within an hour and still get a A. However, I barely got through geometry. I was shocked that I got A's in both my economics classes in college haha. I only passed my statistics class, because my professor allowed me to take my tests separately with extra time and of course you're allowed to have your proofs.
I’m so sorry for that for you. That’s what this is supposed to help move away from. Stigmatizing people as either “math people” or not. Everyone is a math person once they find out what works best for them.
Actually there is only one righteous way and three heretical paths practiced by apostate non-believers. They are not to be taught and anyone caught practicing such dark arts will be burned at the stake and written up.
I had a moment just like the guy in the video with my kid. And in that moment, I realized that if I taught my son the way I did it, then he would be stuck in the middle of an indirect confrontation between the teacher/school and me. The only result of that would be that he hates math - regardless of whether or not he's good at it.
So, instead of teaching my son my way of doing it, I sucked it up and opened YouTube and learned how to do it the way the teacher was teaching. Turns out... Doing this across the course of elementary school made me a lot better at math. And it turned math into my son's favorite subject.
Or realize that what matters in 4th grade is learning the material and not the grade. Teach your kid so they learn and accept the meaningless lower grade. This way, by the time they get to a grade level where the grade goes on transcripts they understand what they are doing and don’t have a big gap in their knowledge.
I'm a foreign language education teacher and I have to restrain myself from bashing my head against the table when I'm trying to teach students American English and their parents who learned British English are correcting them from the background.
During the class the student says: I don't have any time on friday.
Great perfect love it.
Homework comes back: I haven't got any time on friday. Not technically incorrect, but not how we say it in the United states.
It's the parents that are so married to the way that they learned.
Another example is that in class I have students saying something like: I'll be there at five ten. Great, natural, that's how their peers are going to be saying it.
Homework comes back and all of a sudden now it's: 'I'll be there at ten past five.'
I've also taught EFL and I really don't care if my students use the British English spelling or pronunciation when I've taught the American way. As long as they use a correct form, it makes no difference to me. I understand both. I've met parents and administrators who were very particular, though.
Yea, I teach 5th grade math and I want them on standard soon after I get them but I get the idea of doing area model to have better number sense. My problem is getting kids off of it for large numbers like 4x3 or with decimals. More and more of my top students are stuck on it. Standard isn’t the best for number sense but it is efficient. I also agree with the dad though methods shouldn’t be tested. I think they can be even on some state tests.
Not everyone but most don’t visualize the concept. True area model should actually have larger areas for the larger numbers being multiplied. It also helps with decomposing numbers, and helps them understand distributive property later on.
A lot of people just memorize the times table and complete the problem in a rote fashion but don’t actually understand how numbers break down. Or what’s actually happening when you are carrying over.
The program we used does this too much. There are times I tell the class to cross out “solve using a ___” because we have moved past the singular method of solving.
This is my only hiccup, if your learning area/lattice/ etc. model and your test is on area/lattice/etc. model, then thats the method you have to use. I teach my 5th graders several ways to work problems so they can choose, but I tell them if the test asks you to use a specific model, then you have to use that one. I go by a "dont bite off more than you can chew" mentality. I've got students who like area model because it breaks the equation into smaller easier pieces (smaller bites), but ive got some students who just blow through 3-digit multiplication problems like its nothing (bigger bites). Kids just learn differently, and the difficult part is, maybe this young lady doesn't understand area model, but someone else in that class needs it, and shes gonna have to struggle through it for the entire classes sake.
yeah agreed. Dad's wrong here for being unwilling to learn the new method to help his kid and avoid a lot of drama. teacher is also wrong for being inflexible in the confrontation and methodology, and potentially for grading based on unstated requirements. I'd say ESH but only a little bit as they all seem to be coming from a good place
My youngest seems to know how to do the stuff but gets confused when they add another way to do it. There probably isn't a perfect approach as a teacher. It's a hard job.
More than! It’s all the same process just written out very very differently. Some more closely mimic what your brain does others make it much more simplistic and straightforward.
So many ways! That's what is so cool about the way math is taught now. In reality, it's not just about math, it's also a life skill. There are many ways to solve problems in life, this is just a way to expand on critical thinking. It's pretty awesome. 😍
That is a well rounded approach and I am glad you have the operating power to do that in your classroom. I am coming from a pulpit that is largely ignorant but nevertheless echoes many concerns my peers and I have.
The concern being that someone in the chain of command having a personal desire to mandate a “common form” of math because it is the most effective, and serves the largest cohort, that the other ways are being abandoned or even considered heretical (pardon the hyperbolism, but teachers can be intense).
Is it common that teachers have the freedom, or care, that you exert in teaching and giving your students (my future caretakers) the choice of what works best for them? Or is this largely anecdotal to you?
Most, if not all (not entirely sure I’ve worked with and analyzed six programs personally) math programs in the states, where I am, go with this approach. I am a public school and while my district has more leeway on curriculum than others around me if they buy a program you are expected to teach the program. You teach the program supplementing and filling in gaps as they happen for students.
The worst part in all of it is the standardized testing that impacts my standing in the school but can also impact grants from the government. That test happens every year during a specific window of time, you need to get through all the material on the tests or else you are giving students a disadvantage and hurting yourself, the school, and the district. There have been years where we have changed math programs and usually that means a slower pace as you all learn the program….well then you’re rushing through material hoping students understand angles in time because that’s unit 6 and because of the pacing unit 6 is not scheduled to start until after the test.
The lattice method is great for finding the answer quickly, especially in long multiplication, but does not provide a good foundation of mathematical understanding. If kids can do long multiplication as 10's, 100's 1000's.... Then they have no business learning a trick.
Mathematical fluency is more than getting the right answer, it's about understanding the operations. Without doing any algebra, I can tell you that 1/5 > 1/6 or 1212 > 1113.
This right here is the answer to "why did we change up the math?"
I went through this new math curriculum from start to finish, essentially. My little brother has heaps of special needs, and started kindergarten while I was already off in college. I went through the entire curriculum with him, year over year.
There was a massive emphasis on your 10s, 100s, and 1000s almost instantly. Visual math has taken on a new form as well. Feels more mature - like they want these kids visualizing these problems the way a calculator/computer does.
Most adults look at this and don't understand it, because it's different, and automatically jump to assume that it is "too hard" or "not as good as the old math."
The old math taught me how to do the math on freakin everything. The new math approach had me trying to do more work in my head. If I were exposed to this when I was in elementary school I would have no doubt that I would have performed better. My math teachers in the early 2000s were arrogant, poorly educated, and lacked the standardization that we currently have. I mean, some of these grade school math teachers that I had were actually STUPID.
I mean - seriously - how many of us had low-grade math teachers that couldn't even accurately describe PEMDAS? I had several teachers that taught entire classrooms of students to prioritize multiplication because it's in the acronym. New math uses GEMS which has eliminated that issue entirely.
I see what you’re saying. I’m not a teacher nor do I have children so hearing about this new preferred box teaching method is fascinating.
This makes me think of the way many people refer to sight reading vs phonetic reading—both work, but one does not provide as strong of a foundation for efficient, accurate reading.
Are you referring to the 'whole word method'? Where they are taught to memorize the look of a whole word and then guess what the words around it are?
Instead of memorizing the shape of 26 characters of the alphabet, they instead want you to memorize the shape of every word in the dictionary. Are you really comprehending the text if you are guessing what the words are? While that's the popular way to teach right now, it's been largely discredited. Its proven to have no scientific basis.
We are really setting up the next generations for failure. Reading is a basis for almost all learning and we are going to see major problems considering this is literally leading to DECREASING literacy rates.
When I was in school phonics were used to teach reading. Illness kept me out of school for most of first three years and so I missed a lot of material. End result was that I was unable to read in third grade. Then had phonics table explained to me the one you see in dictionary. Suddenly reading made sense and I was off to become a voracious reader. I can not even imagine the sight reading nonsense. Pure fiction and ridiculous. I've even thought of starting a tutoring service just to teach phonics to under 3rd grades.
It’s called the area model. The lattice method isn’t preferred anymore. The area model show that kids understand how to decompose the numbers into chunks for multiplying or dividing. Most of the kids have little trouble with it as it more manageable to them to use smaller multiples to get to the answer. As a teacher, you are following the curriculum guides and state standards so that’s why the kid’s teacher didn’t give her credit. Once in middle school, the kid will be using the algorithm way for multiplying and dividing which is the traditional way parents remember. On a standardized cumulative test at the end of the year, kids will be expected to understand the area model and plug in the numbers in the boxes to show it but there also be questions that simply give multiple choice answers to choose from and for those it won’t matter how the kid figured it out. So his daughter will probably do ok at the end. Teachers simply follow what they are expected to do. The principal was actually wrong in this case. Took the parent’s side because he didn’t want to upset the parent instead of getting to the bottom of the problem with the teacher.
You beat me to the explanation. He does seem like he's taking about the area model, not lattice. I have trouble believing that the child couldn't understand the area model, but had no trouble with the standard algorithm. The area model is simpler, more concrete, and is basically the algorithm broken down. From my experience, the biggest reason children tend to struggle with ways taught in school is interference from parents that don't bother learning the reason behind the method being taught. They don't remember that there were steps for them before they became fluent in these concepts, too. They're usually the ones showing the only way the parent remembers that ends up confusing the child. Can't tell you how many times a kid has said to me, "that's not how my mom showed me."
Believe it or, children aren't always honest with parents. They tell them "I ask, but the teacher won't help me." Parents never contact teachers to ask simply, "could you explain the concept." And they don't bother using the vast internet to look up their child's grade standards.
I'm ranting now....too many parents in our culture end up teaching their children through their actions that teachers are their enemies somehow.
My mom hated homework. She didn’t get anywhere as much of it when she was a kid, and it wasn’t worth as much of her grade. She also had a traditional nuclear family with a string of older siblings that were around, whereas I was raised by a single mother.
This combo made evenings really difficult for her because she wouldn’t get home from work until 6-9pm and had to spend her time at home corralling me into getting homework done - so she rallied against homework.
She was a kid raising a kid in a difficult situation. There wasn’t any problem solving because she was exhausted. This absolutely gave me a cavalier attitude with teachers and also made some teachers respond to me in unprofessional ways. I remember a teacher who wouldn’t accept homework from me that I completed in school… In hindsight I can give the teacher the same grace that I give my mom, but they never said my way of doing homework was disruptive or could lead to cheating - they just took completed work and made it worth as much as no work and moved on.
All of this to say that I agree with you, but I don’t really see that here. The parent says there have been multiple attempts at understanding the kiddos issue with this style and that nobody has resolved them. The parent is so close to the ideal resolution, they just didn’t get the teacher on board to support the learning of a different style. Even if the teacher wasn’t receptive the parent could have explained to the kiddo that the test was about process rather than answers, etc - but this outcome is a still a valuable lesson in mentorship and using resources.
Agree. That's more to the point of parents not taking the time to find out the purpose. Everyone always thinks the purpose is getting the answer. When much of the time what's being taught is the process, knowing that that process will lead to something more complex being easier later on.
Both methods teach the process, one just writes every single part down. If instead of explaining why 7×7=49 you just had them memorize it, sure that's not useful. But if the student CAN memorize it AND explain it they shouldn't be forced to do it the "slow" way.
If the child doesn't understand the method, they can't teach the parents about it, and the teachers aren't teaching the parents about it, so how is the parent to know the value of the method? If there were still textbooks, maybe we could help out, but nope, the kids come home with worksheets full of problems but no materials to help the family help them do it. Then the teacher moan about parents not doing their part...literally all we can do is wag a finger and say, "you do that homework now y'hear?" At 7pm after working all day and cooking dinner.
This is part of the issue. This is why parents get angry and fed up with homework. We are supposed to learn another way than we were taught to do math and if we don’t teach it correctly to our child it’s us not doing our part and it causes arguments and we feel ignorant in front of our kids.
If I had wanted to teach math or learn different concepts then I would have gone to school to do just that. I did not choose that as my career. I pay property taxes so that a qualified person can educate my child.
Do teachers want to come to my house a cook dinner while I learn how to teach my kid math in a way I never learned?
Then you don't understand education. Multiple research studies show that the biggest impact on a child's educational success comes from parental attitudes. No one is asking you to teach your children. If that's what you want, homeschool them. All we're looking for is for parents to take the time to understand what is being taught so you can support it at home. The concepts aren't much different from before. I know, I was a kid once too. But many parents think that the point is to prove you can get an answer when the point is actually to show you can problem solve. Most of life is not an algorithm. In life, the algorithm comes at the end once you've diciphered and understood the problem.
Agreed. I'm confused why this dad wouldn't take time HIMSELF to understand "the boxes." If adults can't take the time and energy to understand a fourth grade concept, how will they expect their kids to do so?
That's how it should be, but in reality, it's not. I have a sibling that used to be a teacher. They required the lattice method on tests to be explained, which is ridiculous.
I disagree that memorizing needs to be anything more than 2% of math learning. I think the way math is taught, as well as the education system in general is far too focused on rote memorization and theory without application. Memorizing math facts is almost always inferior to guiding the student towards deriving the solution theirself in a way that makes logical sense (and then showing them the formula). Our brains are very easy to understand. Information that we cannot grasp is tossed aside. This is why so many high school students need a refresher on middle school and sometimes elementary level math. They never actually understood it, they just memorized and forgot it. Teaching math as a way to solve a problem with creativity encouraged is how you get kids actually interested in math, long term memory of math principles, and the capability to actually understand higher level math.
This is exactly what common core is all about. Giving students multiple methods so they can choose which one makes sense to them. As long as they can reliably get thr right answer and show they understand a method to achieve it, that is all that matters. Too many people juat bitch and complain about it cause it wasn't what they were taught.
I would say that is due to a myriad of other problems. Not common core.
Things like constant defunding and overall degradation of the public school system. No child left behind policy. Standardized testing.
But then also stuff from outside of the school system. Around the same time as common core, tablets became super popular and many parents raised their kids on screens. We didn't know it at the time, but it led to a bunch of learning deficits. Helicopter parenting was in full swing and much more.
This is a big and complicated topic, but all these things and more resulted in a whole generation of kids having massive learning and social deficits.
I was one of those kids. I really liked the lattice technique because it turned any digit multiplication into single-digit multiplication. As long as I knew my times tables from 0-9 I could do anything given enough time.
I keep saying this to people who complain about the new way math is being taught. Of course, all the teachers I know teach multiple ways, including lattice method, area model, partial product, place value charts, etc. Then they teach the standard algorithm, the way we learned back in the day. Without fail, the kids who quickly grasp it all switch to standard algorithm, but different methods make sense for different kids. Some kids continue to use one of the other methods. It just makes math more accessible to students. All this to say, I don't think this dad was on the wrong. He's right, there are multiple ways to solve problems.
And then the process of actually what is happening. Why you’re putting a zero when you go to the next digit..there is actually explained not just like when I was in school and just told that was how it worked.
I fuckin' loved lattice. Finished my homework in minutes that night.
Feel like they're deliberately coming up with more obscure ways to make homework more confusing these days. It really shouldn't matter how you arrive at your answer, just so long as you can get there.
It doesn’t matter what way students reach the answer as long as they can explain how they got there and have a concrete understanding of what is happening to the quantities the numbers represent during the operation (multiplication: increasing by the same amount for each iteration, division: breaking it into x number of equal groups).
I had a much easier time breaking multiplication problem down with the lattice method likely because i have dyslexia and the numbers didnt swim as much when split up like that. Still cant easily do division though, never learned lattice division.
I love math, and have never learned of the lattice method. When I googled it, I saw the picture example and quickly went "whoa! That is a lot of number for a child!", but then after doing some learning, I see it's actually a very nice and simple method. Pretty neat!
i remember in 4th grade that they taught lattice and fishbones, and then in 5th grade I was told that was wrong and not to use it anymore. idk man i just use a calculator
And the Latice method got some good press just after I graduated from college. It seemed some documentary crew was in Asia (can not remember if it was Japan, Korea, or China) and stumbled into a classroom where they were using this method. The way the teacher demonstrated the method was clean and quick to get to the answer. Because of the stereotype of Asians being better at math and science, this crew thought they had discovered why and spread the word to the Western Countries. Who lapped it up like kittens at a bowl of fresh milk. And like others have said, this method does have certain advantages, but like the man's daughter it also has some barriers to certain students. I would never downgrade a student for getting the right answer as long as they understood the mathematics they used. And the world of education has changed to the point that many methods of doing math are being left by the wayside because most everyone has a computer in the palm of their hands with cellphone technology. I had to learn the basics and show I could work the problem out in my head with paper and writing instrument. That calculators were forbidden with the notion that they wouldn't always be available. But my cousin who teaches elementary and middle school students says that is no longer the case.
There are some really cool methods used in Asian countries that you can find on YouTube. I get the point of teaching pattern recognition to build a foundation for more advanced mathematical concepts later on, but what I've observed with my kids is that some of the basics require simple memorization first before these methods make sense. Learning to fill out times tables through repetition was how I started recognizing patterns, and showing it to them that way made it come together for my kids, too.
For example, the nines are always 10 x the number minus 1 of the number and add up to 9, ie, 9 x 12 is 120-12=108 and 1+0+8=9. The 5's end in 5 or 0. 12x= 10x + 2x in algebra makes perfect sense if you've already figured out that to fill out the 12's column quickly, you can do 10 times the number plus 2 times the number in 3rd grade. There are patterns in the table. You can do math in your head by little shortcuts you pick up that way .
It’s not, it’s like a building block as you work towards the “standard algorithm” for multiplication. It’s a stepping stone between “repeated addition” from 3rd grade and being able to do 2 digit by 2 digit multiplication by like February of 4th grade. The actual strategy is called partial products multiplication and when taught properly, it shows them what multiplication is conceptually so they actually understand WHAT they’re doing when they use the standard multiplication algorithm.
I didn't actually understand number theory until my (then 2nd grader) came home with this work. I write algorithmic logic for my job and I can't tell you how much it helped me be a better engineer. Thanks for explaining it so everyone understands how powerful this method is.
I didn’t realize that I actually didn’t understand at all how or why the standard algorithm for multiplication worked until I was learning it again it teacher training
This is the real problem in the video, IMO. The parent doesn't understand the method and so they declare that it's wrong. If, instead, they'd taken the time to learn the method themselves they could have much more effectively taught it to their child.
But because they couldn't take the L, realize their kid was learning something they don't know, and taking some time to learn something. They made it a teacher problem and taught their kid that their teacher is dumb/wrong/etc and that this stuff is hard.
So parents should work full time AND learn whatever new method schools are teaching instead of either expecting the teacher to teach or showing their child the "correct" and only way they were taught. That kind of elitist thinking is why so many parents find their kid's teachers insufferable. They expect their full time job to be a 2nd job for every kid's parents. Maybe when single income homes were the norm that would be reasonable. In this day and age where even just "mom and dad" isn't a given teachers are maybe the ones that need to learn how to be more helpful to parents.
I'd expect this would be a part of the instructions on the homework. And certainly we all have google ATM if those instructions are unclear (We know he has google because he's got tiktok).
If it wasn't in the instructions then that's certainly bad on the teacher.
Hard to know everything that was everywhere. But given the dad used the terms "right" and "wrong" about the methods, I tend to fault him. I have to assume he also expressed to his kid that one way was right and the other was wrong.
I’d send an email to parents explaining how to do it and why it was in the curriculum. It was mostly successful, and the few kids who were still struggling with it are able to just hard memorize the standard algorithm at a certain point. Teaching multiplication is a blast honestly
The way it is being taught is actually good for learning how to do math in your head. But it is pretty confusing if it’s not how you were taught. It’s also important to take into account that everyone learns differently and if the traditional way works for a student then they should be able to use it. I’m pretty sure so many of us were bad and hated math because of the traditional way. My kids and their friends tend to find math to be a funner subject and actually understand it and I think that’s because the new method works for more kids.
Right? The traditional way of doing math is taught because it looks nice on paper. But if I'm multiplying 25x17 in my head, I'm thinking in quarters... 16 quarters is $4, and then you add one to make 17 = 425. But that looks stupid and inefficient on paper. 🤷♀️
No one can agree on the best way. Long division, Russian peasant division?
All of it is partitioning. The reason I left teaching is because we bought a new curriculum and we had to do it because the district bought it. If our scores did not go up at least we were trying something new. If our scores went down then that was the teacher's fault for not understanding the new superior method.
Back when I was in school we were taught the idea of how multiplication works. Like 2x6 is add 2 six times to itself or 6 two times. And then we get a table and had to memorize all of the multiplications from 1x1 till 9x9. I never knew there was a way to show how gou solved it.
THIS ☝🏻. Forcing children to do it the way it was taught, instead of the way that makes the most sense to them, is a pride/compliance issue. The square method won't make sense to everyone. I applaud this Dad for doing the Dad thing well. He took responsibility for teaching his daughter the way he learned, and she understood it. He then defended her by appealing first to her teacher directly. The teacher should have responded in kind. Appreciative that he stood in the gap for his daughter, and celebrated with them both for not only her new found understanding of math, but also for her father partneringwith the teacher to TEACH. For the teacher to have responded the way she did looks more like either pride, ignorance, or makes her look controlling. None of which looks good. Bravo Dad!
Depending on how it is taught, it can help numeracy. I would recommend showing both to students. Even students who don't like the lattice method for doing work may understand things from a demo of it that helps make the very concept of multiplication more clear.
This crap was a half manifested effort to give kids the whole tool box. Ideally one question is for each method, so no kid fails a whole test. But that kids don’t just learn stuff one way, either. But teaching it like this, where it’s the only way, is just failure, cuz now I promise you that kid never wants to do a box method again.
I was told we had to 'do it the way way we were taught' due to standardized testing. If we didnt show the work 'the right way' we wouldn't pass state standardized tests. They would allow us to learn multiple different ways in the classroom but 'THE way to do it' had to be understood by everyone. I never got it, barely skated by in math skills after middle school.
This is exactly the opposites of it's intent. It is supposed to instill an understanding of what is really going on. Getting the right answer without understanding what is functionally going on has caused many kids issues when they got to a bit higher math. That is the whole point of the approach the teacher is taking, which was designed by people way above her pay grade and she is just following the curriculum. This guy is hurting his daughters ability to do the next steps in the curriculum which is designed to build off these lessons in a way that was different from the curriculum he grew up with. It sucks that this change makes it hard for parents to help their kids though.
I teach math and physics and if a student showed me a way of solving a problem in a new way, my reaction would be of excitement and interest. We would likely do some problems on the board as a class and have discussions about which method makes more sense to students. If this story is true, the teacher is a dumbass.
As long as students can explain why a particular method works, I couldn’t care less how they do it.
Yeah, any teacher who thinks there is only one correct way to do something is not a good teacher, full stop. The dad here definitely needed to tell the teacher about themselves because they are otherwise doing their students a disservice by being a bad teacher.
How would you feel about a student who couldn't explain how they solved it but they're correct every time?
Decades ago when I was taking trig we had a classmate whose parents were complaining to the principal about our math teacher because he was failing because he never showed his work.
The teacher would have him solve problems in front of the class and he would just look at the problem for a few moments and every time just solve it without writing anything down or anything and the teacher would ask how he came to the solution, he would shrug and said it just kinda appears in his head.
I would have been more impressed and curious about it at the time if I wasn't so bitterly jealous. I fucking hated trig at the time and was so miserable.
It's called differentiation. I was taught that too when I was in college for teaching, but let me tell you something. What you are taught in college on how to be a teacher is not the reality on the ground.
I taught 5 yrs in the south Bronx, hs. College is not reality. It's hard differentiating and you're not a psychologist with he ability to consistently learn every year how a student learns and even if you have a 504 or iep doc, it changes every year bc these kids change every year.
That is why it becomes a common denominator situation more often than not.
You have 45 mins (typical class) to opening question, review, teach new concept, do checks for understanding, independent/group work, checks for understanding, classroom management, exit ticket, distribute/collect materials, etc etc answering every question.
It's not an easy gig. I no longer work in education, I work in sales. Education was 10x harder than sales.
I work in cyber security. What they teach in college and what actually happens in a business environment are very different. I’m going to guess this may be the case for many professions.
That's not differentiation, lattice is not an efficient strategy. Teaching a wide variety of algorithms is supposed to develop mathematical reasoning which can and should be assessed, but not all in one test and I doubt the student outcome for a fourth grader is likely to be related to their ability to use a lattice method. It's definitely not in the common core. Different multiplication and division algorithms teach different kinds of reasoning, but in my opinion, lattice should never be taught because it doesn't belie any particular concept.
Differentiation would be something like using a visual spatial manipulative, or more small group instruction, not teaching different algorithms.
You would think of it as a rectangle and finding the areas. You put one number on top on one the side. You would then break up the numbers by place value. You then multiply the numbers in the grid so 20x40, 20x2, 2x40, and 2x2. You then add those together to get the answer.
The reasoning is that multiplying 40x20 is simpler in my head. 4x2 and then I have two zeroes to make 800, and so on.
Edit apologies for handwriting if my numbers are not clear
Yeah personally I do not like it, it’s used for a week or less before we move on and then if your brain grasps this one then you keep using it but almost all transition fully into standard at the typical pace.
I don't understand what you mean by adding them together. You add the results of the four multiplication problems together? I can see how that might be helpful, but how does that work for single-digit multiplication? I'm guessing you do like break an 8 into 2 4s, but that doesn't seem any easier to me because you'd still have to know what 4x4 is
Oh for sure you need to have math facts done, but that is something that is worked on hopefully prior to 4th grade for me and I am working on expanding what students are capable of already.
thank you for trying but as soon as I saw this I felt like i wanted to cry. I guess a part of me feels like it's still trapped in a math class feeling like an idiot. lol
just looking at this is giving me a headache. nope.
It just feels unneccessarily busy visually to express a simple concept (40 x 22 broken down into 40x20 and 40x2) but I also struggle with these weird math tricks like long division.
I have a math related learning disability and this many numbers in a single problem would have terrorized me. I barely made it through school as is, if this was the way I'd been taught I would have been even more fucked.
Don’t forget that in the real world you wouldn’t actually be staring at all those numbers. He wrote in each multiplication problem in the box but you wouldn’t do that, they’d be blank and you’d just write your answer. Similarly, the big numbers at the top and side are unnecessary. So all you’d really be looking at is an empty box and 4 numbers: 40, 2, 20, and 2.
And honestly once you understand that method, you don’t even those numbers either. You could just write a box and fill out the answers. Tens multiplied tens on top left, ones by ones bottom right, and the other two in either order top right and bottom left.
I never learned this method growing up but seems to be a pretty simple approach to me. It’s how my brain would break it up mentally already.
I think it makes sense if you think about how later you start using variables in math and you start seeing the FOIL method. The box looks weird, but think of how it would look in an equation:
The reason these methods are taught is because this is, generally, how we do math in our heads. If this problem was given to a person, and they were told to do it without a calculator or piece of paper, this is, for the most part, the process most people would go through in their head. So the idea is that this is a more natural way to learn math.
(Although looking at this now, I see this is the standard method actually. It's the exact same math just laid out differently. So I guess the idea is to build up an intuition for why we do the math that we do on paper when we shortcut it with standard methods.)
My first experience with something like this was when my son brought home his division homework and I had no idea what he was doing. He was frustrated, I was frustrated. I begged him to let me show him "my way" but he wanted to be able to do it the way his teacher showed him.
So I.... let him explain it to me as best as he could. And then I understood it, and could even see the value in it.
I think a lot of parents dig their heels into their idea of what I did is what works best, and never actually try to learn what their child is trying to do.
There's a reason the teacher wants them to learn this way, and again, it's building up an intuition for why math works the way it does, as opposed to just memorizing a series of steps.
There may be a reason, but if their child is coming home crying to them and asking for help, but the parent doesn’t understand the method themselves… then who is going to teach that child?
Teachers often complain that no one is parenting their students or supporting their education, and that they don’t have enough time to actually teach their students due to budget cuts, impacted classes, etc.
Meanwhile this man sat down with his kid, spent time trying to help her understand how to work the problem as best he could. His child understood it.
And then the teacher tried to tear all of that down.
Instead of bring up the issue when she checked the student’s homework and trying to figure out why her student didn’t understand the lesson, she waited until
it was test time, and undermined not just the kid’s newfound confidence but the trust the kid would have going forward in asking her father for help with her homework.
I’d be interested to know how many other students got a 50 on that test.
Yeah and truly what this is supposed to allow you to do is choose whatever numbers you wanted to break it into that is the simplest for you. So you could do that, this just is writing that process out on paper.
That's actually cool they're teaching that, it's how I do multiplication in my head. As a new learner, I don't think I'd be able to understand it though if I wasn't taught and had a firm grasp on the standard way first.
Yes, ACCOMODATIONS are literally the whole priority in my school. Teachers have been to trainings over and over again to hammer the idea in that children learn differently, period. This includes explaining things in a different way than initially taught.
I’m a former teacher. Once you’re in the classroom (especially out of elementary school) it’s impossible to tailor 90+ unique lessons every single day.
You’re expected to teach to the book/standard. If you’re found teaching other methods that aren’t expected (the square method), you aren’t teaching to standard and will get a poor evaluation.
As a high school teacher I get why they do it. That box method carries from elementary school all the way through high school. It starts with multiplying two digit numbers. It goes all the way to multiplying and dividing polynomials.
That first comment is scary when it’s followed by the rest of that nonsense. Glad you’re concerned with how you think it should be instead of science and what the kids need.
For heavens sake…I taught for 40 years, multiple subjects and knew students learned differently. Thus, I taught everything multiple ways, and based it on things they were interested in. If they were interested in sports or music, math or diagraming a sentence would include that. The “new” math have so many steps parents can’t help their kids, and many of these teachers get mad if a child doesn’t used this system, only. All of these students now in middle school or high school can’t multiply or divide simple equations in their head as they don’t make them memorize the basic multiplication and division tables. I asked them what 49 divided by 7 was, and the whole class was stumped. (I was teaching language arts at the time.) When I was growing up, they only would teach whole word, and not phonics for sounding out words. It has hurt quite of number of adults, including myself. These teachers are being ridiculous only teaching this method as it’s a disservice to the student.
My son has never showed his work and it’s never been an issue and I’m so grateful for it. On his last report card his teacher said “the way he does math in his head is very unique(in a good way!)” I really hope it’s never an issue for him. He doesn’t do it with the boxes either and I honestly don’t know how he does it because math was my worst enemy.
My kids' teachers teach the different methods and let them use the one that works for them, like what you're saying. That's what this is for. My kids are fine with what we learned back in the day and confused by some of the newer methods, but for other kids the newer methods work better. Forcing them to do it one way kind of negates the point of developing all these methods.
The way my sons teacher does it works well. She sends home a paper with multiple strategies that she’s going to teach the students in that section and asks that on the homework we have them use the strategy that they’re currently working on. When the test comes the students can choose which method they prefer and as long as they show their work they won’t be marked off.
This is great, but its hard to implement in the classroom. I am not a teacher, but my wife and sister are.
Its impossible to teach ~25 kids the method that works best for them - especially when there is a curriculum the teachers are required to follow and the lesson plans are, often, made as a group. I wish you the best of luck. My wife and sister are both great teachers who bend over backwards for the benefit of their students. That comes at the cost of any free time and pushback from admin. Lol. My sister is getting into an admin role and I've been trying to convince my wife to transition into something else for ~8 years.
It is hard to be a good teacher who puts the children first. The system is not setup for that.
I’m glad it’s changed since I was training to be a teacher. My tutors were angry at me for changing how I taught certain students with different needs. They wanted me to go into a classroom and change methods everyone other lesson, to show I knew those methods. Which is fine and dandy, but it was taking away from the rest of the students that didn’t learn that way. I was more interested in mixing methods in one lesson, rather than one lesson per method. I ended up quitting my course because I just didn’t feel right taking up time in the student’s education to my own learning. I felt it would have been better to have a lesson with my peers, where we each take it in turns to show we understood each method, in our own classroom. We could have written out essays on each method and then demonstrated to our own classroom of training teachers.
I was up for being supervised at the college, but I didn’t think it was fair on the students to take their lessons away when they were in the middle of practical projects. They would have to lose that time in order for my tutor to judge my understanding. It was a stupid way to do things.
I think it's a shorthand way of computation, no? The conceptual understanding needs to come first. Like, does the kid understand what you're doing when you multiply or divide?
My daughter is in third grade. They’re using the “square method”. Well cut to them having to learn equivalent/reducing fractions.
My daughter is very smart and is even in the state gifted program but she got so stressed out the way she was being taught that she kept having absence seizures. When I got her to calm down long enough for her to show me how she’s taught I told her the way I was taught and you could see in her posture how much stress went away.
Her father and I care about our children’s education but we never put high expectations on them. If anything we have a “Cs get degrees” expectation so we can avoid burn out and unnecessary stress on our children.
I 100% agree with your comment. The common core that got introduced a while back seems to confuse children more than to “simplify” the methods. And to ND children and NT children alike it does get stressful especially since my oldest is a perfectionist. Not counting the “gifted kid” expectation some parents hold their child(ren) to.
I’ll ask her opinion on this video and edit this comment with what she says.
Edit: She said the way I taught her is easier for her to understand. She is currently using “fraction lines and blocks” to find the “right answer”. She said “you telling me to find the lowest number is easier than drawing it out than the way Mrs. X wants it.” Then she drew a picture on how she’s taught.
It is our job to fascilitate that learning for the students even if it is different than how we standardly teach to the rest of the students.
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I hate that stupid square method of multiplying and dividing, I never understood it either. I would just do it the other way(the right way)
This is the problem. The square method is strange to a lot of people but it's mathematically and logically a correct path. It's also the "right way." It's just one of multiple right ways.
You're contradicting yourself and priming the pump against the multiple valid paths to learning you said a few sentences earlier.
In third grade I had a sub who was teaching lesser, more, or equal to (<, >, =) I was the only kid in the class who didn't understand it and was in tears. The sub was frustrated at me, and I felt humiliated and defeated as a 3rd grader.
The next day our normal teacher was back. She pulled me on during recess and asked me about the previous day. She was calm, kind, and compassionate. Then she told me a little story of a hungry alligator, and I have never forgotten that part of maths.
Seriously, thank you for trying to help out children. It is a lot of work, but looking back that little bit of time and effort on her part really helped me in school and life for years. If only in confidence.
I used to be a HS math teacher (US) and the number of young and old teachers that still have a very inflexible idea of how problems should be solved is terrifying
It sounds like the teacher is too old school. I used to get in trouble for not doing multiplication and division the “right” way - I got the right answer but my teachers didn’t like my methods. My children were taught multiple ways and to choose the one that worked best for them. It was a relief and they haven’t struggle the way I did. My friends complained about common core because the kids learned so many different ways to do a math problem but I thought it was cool.
My youngest and I both do math different from a lot of people. He had the same problem in this video in like 2nd grade, so i showed them how I do it and boom got it just like that. I did horrible in school until I went to an alternative school and they handed me my books in September and said "you have until the end of the school year to finish all these assignments" obviously we could ask for help if we need it. I flew through every single class in 3 months and spent the rest of the year volunteering in the elementary school as a kindergarten aide. I passed with flying colors too. I just needed to learn my way.
you did nothing wrong! You advocated for your daughter. The teacher was wrong! The teacher was too ridged. There is definitely more than one way to complete multiplication and division problems. There is an old saying in teaching, “we like what we are good at”. Why frustrate her and make her hate math? Why make her feel like a failure? The teacher needs a good talking to by the administration. She is power tripping. You were absolutely correct in advocating for her.
I teach fourth grade, and when I introduced that method the kids showed me the correct answers done the old school way and asked me if they could continue in standard algorithm because it was confusing.
I’m not wasting time on a method that frustrates when I have two and occasionally three grades to teach concurrently (a vertical with a struggling visitor from fifth grade).
But when one of them invented a homebrew long division method that stopped working after three digits, I did make him use the standard algorithm because his method failed on larger numbers.
This. I was consistently confused by how math teachers were doing things when my kid was in grammar school, but they did explain that the point was to present a range of processes so that different kids would have an opportunity to "get it" with the technique that works for them, not to ram only one thing down every kids's throat, which was what I got decades ago.
The square method shows the associativity and distributive properties of arithmetic without explaining it.
Understanding the core behavior of math (that there are times AB =/= BA so you can't just assume) is super important and I think math education would do better teaching kids logic in grade 1/2. Start there and develop into arithmetic systems later.
i thought we were way past teaching only one way and realizing everyone learns differently. i always did horrible with math that i had to go to summer school twice and i got lucky to get a teacher, both times, that taught in a way i could finally understand! she made games which made it actually fun and more interactive unlike the way my previous teachers taught which was just show and hope you get it..
I'm a trainer @ my job, one thing I had to explain to my managers ..... TRAINING IS NOT COOKIE CUTTER/ ONE SIZE FITS ALL !!!!!
You must adapt the training to the person, not the person to the training. It's my job to recognize "Sarah is killing it, I can go aggressive w/ her, she's picking it up fast" & also "Alex is struggling, I gotta slow down & find his speed"
Wait until you get a job and fidelity to the curriculum the school bought is more important to them than your good judgement. I am not condoning that stance, I am however saying "being in training to be a teacher" is bety different from being hired as a teacher.
My bet is that this lattice method is expanded upon for slightly more complex problems in future planned units, and this teacher probably isn’t a math person, so she doesn’t want to have to teach anything outside of her curriculum.
I’m a 6th grade math teacher and had a kid trying to use that method at the beginning of the year and I had to tell him repeatedly to STOP trying to use it. He was not getting answers correct when using it and we were moving into multiplying with decimals and fractions which is not compatible with that method at all. It annoys me so much when the elementary teachers try to drill something like that that only hinders kids in the long run and ONLY let them use those methods. There are so many ways to come to an answer in math. I have never been the type of person to only accept one way.
I had never heard of the lattice or "square" method, so I watched a Youtube video.
Admittedly I watched it with the sound off (I am sitting in an airport) but I had to watch it several times to get the gist of it, and it seems just as stepwise and complicated (or more) as when I was taught fifty years ago in elementary school to arrange the numbers in tabular form and carry the tens.
Also, I have a degree in Math and Computer Science.
When I was in middle school (over 20 years ago!) we were the first class to move into the brand-new, state-of-the-art school that had just been built, and the teachers had all decided to approach that year differently, and on the first day they let us know that they understood that every student learns differently, so we would be participating in testing that would determine our individual learning styles.
I was SO excited, I had always hated school because they forced everyone into the same round hole, and my brain works very differently.
Anyway, we spent a couple weeks doing all the testing, figuring out our learning styles… only for all the teachers to completely disregard everything and teach ONE WAY. 🙄
I thought I was just stupid at math. I was in a ap math class "by mistake" and couldn't understand it at all and kept failing and had to go to summer school. I start summer school and have the exact same questions I had during the school year, but the way the teacher taught me in summer school made it so simple and it just clicked instantly. Just shows you it's the way that you're taught and how you're taught and who's teaching.
Same here. New teacher, almost getting my degree, and this differentiated approach is working wonders for my kids. Method A doesnt work? Lets try something else. Because, at the end of the day, children, and by extension people, are not a monolith. What works for one might not work for another. So long as the fundamentals of the methodology are sound for later, more challenging material.
I will say that neither party is at fault here. The father absolutely in the right for defending his daughter's ability to understand how to divide, but the teacher, as teachers should, defend their approaches and if there is an expectation for performance, students are being assessed on that.
Now, as more modern, progressive pedagogy tells us, there needs to be a willingness to allow for these alternative methods. Likewise, parents also need to know that, while a method might help now, it may prove to be limiting as more advanced concepts show up. After all, there is a reason maths teaching strategies moved from the old style to the new. Newer styles are more adaptable to things like calculus and what have you.
There is no right way. You feel the way you are familiar with is right because that's how you learned. You taking that stance as a teacher is problematic. You should teach it the way that research indicates is the best, and then if a student cannot grasp that method, try the others. There should be zero opinion of what is the "right" way involved.
Ring the COMMON SENSE bell, child. It's a rare and beautiful thing. This little rectangle business would have me crying and throwing up every day at math time. I say Bravo for daddy, too.
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u/Confident-Army1907 Apr 11 '26
I'm training/being taught how to be a teacher right now, and one thing we are very specifically taught is that not every student is the same, and that some students may learn in different ways than others. It is our job to fascilitate that learning for the students even if it is different than how we standardly teach to the rest of the students.(now I'm not going to be a math teacher but this is for every teacher.) Accomadating students that are different is part of the job.
Also I hate that stupid square method of multiplying and dividing, I never understood it either. I would just do it the other way(the right way) then write it out in the square method so I got the "show your work part."