Mathematics Discovery
Essay by Swimming Pool • April 27, 2016 • Coursework • 339 Words (2 Pages) • 1,233 Views
1. Need automaticity to build a foundation and go to next step
Repetition helps build synapses in the brain
The more you repeat it, the more natural it becomes to have ans pop into your head
To develop fluency in maths before tackling more complex subjects at a later stage
e.g. English pupil were now 3 years behind Chinese peers by age of 15
2. Lack of knowledge
It is not the learning of times tables that is causing anxiety but it is lack of times
table knowledge
3. Learning mathe involves knowledge in 3 main types: factual, procedural and conceptual
Neglecting the factual inhibits the development of procedural and conceptual knowledge and damages mathematical learning
E.g. Writer’s experience:
Working with adult who found working with numbers and other aspects of maths difficult because they lack the automatic recall of basic number facts
Their opportunities are thus restricted because they fear numbers
4. Remembering times table does not mean rote learning/memorizing
China: some of them use visual approach, which is more conceptual than we have been believed
E.g. East children had been the top performer in maths
5. Biologically, memorizing help build the gap from counting fingers to complex calculation
Memorizing help child’s cognitive development
Child will use their hippocampus to convert the STM of calculation to LTM, and thereby taking over from the pre-frontal parietal cortex. Therefore, the space in the pre-frontal cortex, which is an area of higher order reasoning, is freed.
Brain can this accommodate the greater demands of more complex maths
Repeated problem solving can enhance hippocampus activity.
It helps recall basic arithmetic facts, which is a stepping stone to mature calculation
Hippocampus plays critical, time-limited role. And it helps consolidate the knowledge. Without consolidation, no use.
The "Overlapping Waves" model proposes that
at any given age, children will resort to a multitude ways of thinking. Instead of a step-like or linear progression, development can
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