Math Shortcuts | Introduction Into the World Of Brain Codes

Students will learn three different methods for learning the times tables.  Over time, knowing basic facts like the  addition and times tables how become less important in school, but it is a critical skill for doing concepts like algebra, fractions or geometry.  These skills are in every concept in math. Every one.  These skills are one of the biggest indicators of success in later classes.  In other words, students who are in lower level math classes often don't have mastery of these basic skills.

Assessment: 

A quick check on the math facts will be done on screen.  Three questions like 8 x 7,  6 x 4 and 3 x 7 will be shown on screen for 30 seconds and students will have a chance to answer on their own.  They will not have to share their answers, but it will give them an idea of how well they know the times tables.  Typically if they are able to get the right answer, it will be by counting fingers or sets of lines. 

Learning: 

Method 1:  'The Math Stories':

I tell a few short stories with images that represent numbers.  They are short, fun stories that change each time to include the students, their friends and their families.  Making the stories personal makes them more memorable.  Any family or friends included will only be referenced to by first name only.   One story is about a crazy mom trying to kill a spider with a golf club and a window getting broken in the chaos.  Another is about a girl and her friend stacking books on a baseball cap making a tower so tall that they fall over and break the windshield of a very expensive car.     

Once the students understand the stories, they are walked through the process of finding the answer using the images.  The script is the same for each story, which means each time they go through the steps they get faster.  Here is what it might look like for the story about the girls stacking books:

Q: What's the picture for the number 7?  
A: A book (It opens up like a 7 and is called 'The 7 Dwarfs'.)
Q: What's the picture for the number 6?
A: A baseball cap (it is shaped like a 6 from underneath and has 6 sections.)
Q: What gets broken? 
A: The windshield of the car.
Q: How many wheels does it have?
A: 4 (so it's forty something...)
Q: How many wipers does it have?
A: 2, so it's 42.

We rehearse this a few times so they can see how fast the stories can get.

Method 2: 'Number Grid':

The students will learn to write the grid pattern for 7, one of tougher numbers to find its multiples.  They learn to draw a grid, like an empty Tic-Tac-Toe.  They are shown an easy way to put the numbers into the grid to create a mini chart for the multiples of 7.  This is a chart they can use for multiplication and division, even long division.  

Method 3: 'The Kenzy Method':

This method is not traditional, but is based on the Eastern abacus style of finding answer to math fact questions.  Students will be shown the relationship between digits that are exactly 5 apart, like 2 and 7 or 3 and 8.  Then shown how they can take shortcuts using these patterns.  For example finding the answer 8 + 7 would be the same as finding the answer to the smaller 'shadow' numbers 2 +3 and adding 10.  They could also find the answer to 8 x 7 by adding the 'shadow' numbers to get 5_ and drawing 2 vertical lines that intersect with 3 horizontal lines  that make 6 intersections to make 56.  This is something that has to be seen to be understood. It is incredibly fast, especially when it is compared to counting fingers.  

Each sections takes less than 20 minutes to explain, so one hour will be plenty of time to cover these three advanced strategies.  This will give students a chance to see if they want to learn the rest of the times tables using one of these methods.

These are methods I've done for years.  In Canada, Australia and the United States most kids would have trouble answering a question like 6 x 7 quickly, if they could answer it at all.  The threshold for learning these math facts is 3 seconds.   This means that if a student can learn a strategy to be able to answer a question like this in under 3 seconds, they will likely continue to get faster as they use these in math class.  The first way to do this is to do enough practice like doing worksheets or using flashcards.  This will typically work with less than one third of all children, that is if they are given the chance to do this.  The goal of this workshop is to show a way to learn a very effective strategy and get the practice to be successful in math.