Reply To: Lesson 4-2: Automaticity vs. Memorization

[Julie Schoenfeld]

I used to think I was bad at math because I couldn’t state my multiplication facts quickly enough (playing around the world game). Instead, I would break numbers apart, multiply the pieces, and then put them back together to get the correct answer. Now I know that I was actually thinking more deeply about number sense than some of my classmates who could jump to the product within a couple of seconds. I often see numbers as dots on dice. So 8 to me looks like the 5 die and the 3 die. Or sometimes, when I think of 8, I see 2 less than 10.

[Julie Schoenfeld]

I used to think I was bad at math because I couldn’t state my multiplication facts quickly enough (playing around the world game). Instead, I would break numbers apart, multiply the pieces, and then put them back together to get the correct answer. Now I know that I was actually thinking more deeply about number sense than some of my classmates who could jump to the product within a couple of seconds. I often see numbers as dots on dice. So 8 to me looks like the 5 die and the 3 die. Or sometimes, when I think of 8, I see 2 less than 10.