Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion New, fancy long division... what is this?

This reminds me of meringue. Just how much spare time did the person who invented this have, anyway?

But this is multiplication, not division. Is there some ungodly equivalent for division?

Gaaaahhh!!!!

Holy cow. NO wonder some people learn that they are terrible at math.

I think the lattice multiplication originated in Asia - our school district was parading it around a few years ago as the latest greatest way to teach multiplication. And then, oddly, it disappeared... hmmmmmmmm....

So anyway, my dd is home from school now, so I asked her if she could show me how her teacher had taught her to do long division. She said "Oh! Sure!" and made up a problem (dividing 5 into 12543) and then started to show me how to work it out... the old-fashioned way that we taught her how to divide So I explained that I wanted to see how she did it with the boxes etc... and she said "Oh! Yeah! I remember that! You use arrays!"... then... "Oh wow, I'm not going to do THAT problem that way - there are too many numbers!". So she decided to show me how to divide 5 into... 25. She started to draw out a 5x5 array, wrote the 5 divided into 25 equation and.... through the pencil down and said "I'm not gonna do that - it's too much work. Why do you want to know?" and then she bounced happily out of the room, after she'd solved the other problem the usual way.

So... I guess she isn't interested in explaining it to anyone... or recommending it as a worthwhile method

polarbear

It could very well be that they are using Everyday Math -



(make sure you view some of the comments below the video...very entertaining)

So evidently this is a method which is most useful for dividing, say...

10...

by, um-- five?

I just want to say that the title of this thread is terrific.

Which makes me think they're working with a new version of the "if it ain't broke" axiom...

...If it ain't broke, then devise a convoluted new method that justifies your continued employment as an administrative microbe.

Yes, this is the problem with lattice division. It works well (?) for "neat clean, easy numbers" but get into larger numbers and 2 or three digit divisors and it becomes overwhelming. I actually had one of my high students show me how to do it last year and it does make sense, but it is not intuitive or useful past elementary school. I don't know how to explain it now though - sorry.

LOL!

It wasn't lattice.... Of course the worksheet he brought home had YET ANOTHER DIFFERENT method on it. I poo-poo'd the whole thing and just taught him "normal" division. He was like oh, I can do that... and finished up the worksheet in like 2 minutes. *sigh* Hopefully he doesn't get marked off for not following their method.

(Apparently his math/science teacher quit! He told me she "retired" - it was her first year teaching. So he's had a parade of subs this week. Hopefully they fill the position quickly!!)

Can we rename "Everyday Math" and it's maddening methods to "Everyday Disaster"? It must be incredibly frustrating for all the parents trying to help their child with yet another convoluted and impracticable method that their child "MUST" learn to succeed in math class. I can almost hear the groans from all the parents when a new worksheet comes home each day.