My second graders in San Francisco’s Bayview and Hunger’s Point neighborhood loved my math lessons. Hands up high in the hair, they were eager for me to call them to show off their correct answers. By the end of the school year, five of my second graders scored above 90% on their California CTBS test for math. Little Billy scored99%! Many parents lined up their little ones wanting to get them in my class the next year. Sadly, 1993-94 was the only year I taught the elementary school before I was hired to teach high school.
During the next 19-year of teaching high school Mandarin Chinese, I was inspired to teach American kids basic mental math skills, as I was shocked to find out that many of my teenage students lacked elementary math skills, necessary tool to survive life.
“I think your plan to teach kids learn about money through mental math is too old fashioned,” one woman in my 5-page writers’ group at Berkeley’s Rockridge Library said to my face. “I don’t even carry cash on me. I use my card.” And she was a preschool teacher!
“But you’re still dealing with money transactions,” another fellow writer promptly spoke up in my defense, much to my gratitude. “Better to quickly figure out the total amount of your cost, so you’ll know the cashier punched in the right number.”
It’s a sad fact that more and more young American adults today couldn’t make it on their own financially. One of the main reasons is their failure to grasp the basic math concept of “adds up.” They spend carelessly what they have, even spend what they don’t have and end up getting themselves into deep, life-ruining debt.
“Use your credit card!” Carrie, a teacher colleague and friend, tried to encourage me to buy the $79 sweater I couldn’t put down one day we were shopping at Mervyn’s back in 1993. “Don’t worry, Jing. You don’t have to pay now!” But I was finally able to resist the idea of indulging myself with the unnecessary luxury. It was just too expensive and not in my budget. Soon, Carrie cried out in distress her credit card had been shredded by the company because she maxed it out and couldn’t pay anymore.
One parent, a proud ABC (American Born Chinese) woman one day slammed me for trying to teach her teenage daughter not to count with her fingers like a preschooler. “Who do you think you are?” she was livid. “I knew all about the rigid Chinese way of teaching. Don’t you bring that to American classrooms!”
I became more determined to teach and enlighten young American minds to prevent such proud ignorance and blissful stupidity. For America’s better future, young kids need to learn some basic mental math skills so they will grow up with their brain powered sufficiently for a life of confidence after they learn how to:
- calculate their daily money spending without using an electronic calculator;
- balance their checkbook;
- file their own taxes;
- gain basic financial literacy by understanding the concept of “adds up.” For example, spending $90 a month at a coffee shop ($3 per cup per day), or saving $80 by spending $10 a month by making their own all-you-can-drink coffee at home; and,
- have fun with numbers and enjoy math.
Is it hard for a child to learn mental math skills? Not at all. The basic arithmetic mental math I learned before age ten in China was enough for me to file my own American 1040 taxes in pencil and paper.
The key is to have a compassionate and competent teacher start off the young learners in the correct way. For, learning should not be force-fed, intimidating, confusing or boring but enlightening, inspiring and fun.
To master basic mental math skills, a young child must first learn counting skills and achieve proficiency.
And the following two steps of counting skills are essential:
Step 1– Count within ten
Forward
Backward
Even numbers
Odd numbers
*The purpose of Step One is to reinforce the sequential orders of numbers
Step 2– count from 1 to 100:
Count by 2’s
Count by 3’s
Count by 5’s
Count by 10’s
*What age group is this for?
All kids are born with different abilities and grow in various pace. Even Einstein didn’t start talking until he was five years old! You know your own kids the best. Start them off as soon as they’re cognitively able, usually around age three for most kids. The younger, the better. For children have the best memory to store, for life, facts of information. Their mind is like a clean new blank piece of paper, or a brand-new chalk board: clear, fresh and impressionable ready to be drawn the best pictures on. Brain is a precious gift, not some fancy no-touch artifact displayed on the shelf of a museum. You don’t use it, you lose it, just like our muscles and bones. Utilize a child’s brain to the maximum will prepare them for an adult life of confidence, while leaving a child’s brain idling around, on the other hand, is but a grave waste, like leaving a diamond unchiseled, embedded and buried in rough coarse rocks.
**How do you know your young student has achieved proficiency in counting?
Each step of the counting skills is a stepping-stone for the next. It is a must that your young student masters each step before moving on. To “master” means to memorize by heart. In other words, the young learners should be able to rattle out the numbers in the correct order without having to pause or look up left and right to ponder.
Remember, the ultimate goal is to be able to count from pure brain power of memory without using any visual aids. To reach that goal, you can, however, help your young student by starting out using a visual aid and gradually phase it out.
Here are a few handy visual aids to practice with:
For counting within 10 –
Use fingers, toes, toys, Lego pieces, etc.
For counting within 100 –
Use coins, pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters
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