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Newsletters Primary education newsletters. Secondary education newsletters. Subscribe to our newsletters Receive teaching resources and tips, exclusive special offers, useful product information and more! Mental computation does matter — and here are five good reasons why. Prepare two sets of simple questions that are best solved with a mental computation strategy students are familiar with, such as the Think Mentals Friendly and Fix addition strategy.
Have all students tackle the first set of questions as a mental computation warm-up exercise. Rather than having to whip out your phone to make the calculation, due to memory, the answer would simply come to you. One of the most common forms of mental mathematics that is widely taught in primary school is that of the multiplication table. The multiplication table comes in various sizes, though most popular is its 10 by 10 version which tests multiplication up to Students are strongly encouraged to memorised multiplication by a single digit by another single digit as it greatly speeds up their problem-solving capability.
More importantly than speed, it frees up your brain to work on other aspects of a problem. This is essential at higher levels of education where time during exams is precious and every bit of energy saved could make the difference between a letter grade.
In addition to its utility, mental mathematics also carries a social aspect. Many students who previously failed to first master basic mental mathematics tend to struggle in the classroom when on other topics. They commonly find their peers solving questions at a much faster pace and without the aid of tools. Subsequently, they are prone to entering a mindset whereby they deduce themselves to simply being born inferior in mathematics.
This could not be further from the truth, however it does hammer home the importance of being fluid with mental mathematics. There is no short cut to mastering the fundamentals of mental mathematics. However, there are certain methodologies that have been proven to be quite successful in aiding students.
Firstly, you should look to demonstrate the usefulness of mental mathematics. For example, take your weekend grocery shopping trip to show your child the efficiency of mental math before challenging them to do so with tasks within the supermarket. With each successful application, your child will grow in confidence be willing to experiment on their own.
Secondly, for starters, certain mental mathematics strategies could be used as a launching platform. Take for example the multiplication of 20 by For primary school students to perform this, they might resort to using pen and paper. However, a simple strategy to tackling this would involve multiplying 2 by 3 before appending the three 0s. Children will be able to understand the mathematical concepts instead of just reading them.
Maths is logical and it should be solved with logical steps. These logical steps can be learnt and practised and are especially relevant with mental maths. If children have a better understanding of the mental maths concepts, they are more likely to approach maths with a positive outlook. It must be noted here that when it comes to mental maths, the duration of exercises does not matter a lot.
Instead, the frequency is what matters so doing them on a daily basis is essential. At StudyBox, we believe that mental maths is the key to confidence.
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