Liping Ma (1999) states that after she carried out her research in China and the USA, she realised the 4 principles of fundamental mathematics. One of which interested me quite a bit was that of CONNECTEDNESS. At first I thought the most logical idea would be to connect the learning to the children’s interests but after reading more into this principle i realised it was the connections between maths itself! Obviously,I had many questions…
What could possibly connect in maths?
What links could be made?
and lastly…
Why didn’t I realise them earlier?!?!
Addition and Subtraction
Firstly, In primary school there is always the challenge of learning addition and subtraction, later to be followed by multiplication and division. I think its apparent that no matter how many times children try to hide their fingers under the table we all know they use them to count up and down. Addition usually comes first followed by the slightly more difficult process of subtraction. (Maths Steps, no date)
Picture Taken from Google Images – www.elearnclass.org
In my opinion this pictures sums it up completely, If children are taught addition sums first they should completely understand the structure as to see how subtraction can be made simpler.For example, an addition sum can be changed to a subtraction sum by first changing the sign then secondly swapping the positions of the first and last numbers. This would be the same for subtraction to addition. THEY ARE LINKED… OR YOU COULD EVEN SAY CONNECTED!!
Picture taken from Google Images –www.education.com
This worksheet I found, could be a great resource and be used as a way to explain this to the children to allow them to get a feel for the inverse operation! The fact its called families is also quite helpful as in my opinion it can show how they can find the “families” for multiple sums and use this to help them sole problems in other areas of mathematics or even just life in general! Like money for example!!!
REFERENCES
Ma, L. (1999) Knowing and teaching elementary mathematics: Teachers’ understanding of fundamental mathematics in china and the United States. United States: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Maths Steps (no date) MathSteps: Grade 1: Inverse relationship between addition and subtraction: What is it? <!– hide script from old browsers if (document.images) { nav1off = new image nav1on = new image nav1off.src = ‘/math/mathsteps/images/nav/nav_wii.gif’ nav1on.src = ’/m. Available at: https://eduplace.com/math/mathsteps/1/b/index.html (Accessed: 4 December 2015).
