The 80th Carnival of Education

If you're after news, opinions and all things education, then check out this week's Carnival of Education at the Education Wonks.

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Should kids learn times tables?

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Knowing that I teach year seven mathematics, people often ask me my opinion on whether kids should learn their times tables (or multiplication tables if you prefer). In this post, I argue that times tables should be learned at some stage of the child's education, but only as part of many ideas related to multiplication. (c) Can Stock Photo Firstly, multiplication tables should not be learned too early. My kids' primary school holds off till kids reach grade 3. A kid who "knows the answer" to 3x8 will not feel the need to group objects in threes or in eights and will miss discovering a few things about multiplication:
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Make up four: a puzzle

A colleague gave me this puzzle yesterday. It is very cool. Rearrange the sticks on the left hand side of the equal sign, so the sum does equal 4. | + || + ||| = 4 Note: The plus signs are also made up of sticks. Post your answers in the comments field. Elias. Technorati tags: Technorati tags: Puzzle Mathematics
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Book Review: Totto-chan - A book for every educator

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Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window Author: Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, Translator: Dorothy Britton. Publisher: Kodansha International, 1996. ISBN: 4-7700-2067-8 This book was given me as a gift by my sister-in-law, an educator and avid reader. It is the autobiography of a famous actress and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. The book concentrates on a short period of time when the author attended Tomoe primary school in Tokyo. In fact, the book is more a description of the school founder's practice than it is a life story. Expelled from first grade! The book starts by telling of Totto-chan's expelling from her previous school, when she was only in grade one. You see, "the little girl at the window" would wait all morning for street bands to walk by the school and call them over to play their music. This was seen as highly disruptive behaviour and, exasperated, her teacher decided the girl did not become at the school. Eventually, her mother found a school th
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