JoVE at Tricotomania writes about Math
“Basically, there is a firm belief in the school system that you can’t move on until you have mastered everything in the current curriculum because it builds. Mighton started a charity called JUMP which provides tutorial support for remedial students. He has had remarkable success and has learned some very interesting things about how to teach mathematics. Quite apart from the usefulness or otherwise of long division, Mighton suggests that a complete mastery of one topic is not required to move on to something harder. In fact, he argues that tackling and mastering a ‘harder’ skill (albeit with problems limited by the level of mastery of the former one) might act as a powerful motivator to go back and learn those ‘precursor’ skills.”
(HT: Ron at Atypical Homeschool)
This is a very interesting thought. Once I had a book about teaching math written by someone in Singapore. One teaching strategy that was mentioned was that teachers would show the children a complex problem at the beginning of the lesson and then model how to solve it. The children then got to see how a “math mind” worked without the immediate pressure of having to solve similar problems themselves. I suppose it is comparable to reading aloud to a child long before expecting the child to read himself; or like a dad working in his wood shop and the little boy watching before he tries it out.
Anyway, back to JoVE’s post, I had always wondered if math was REALLY quite as sequential as everybody said it was — especially since I have skipped around a math text quite a bit with my younger scholars with no apparent ill effects.
