In “13 Rules that Expire” by Karp, Bush, and Dougherty (2014), they talk about thirteen math “rules” that a lot of students live by. But, in reality these rules will “expire” or not work anymore. For example, a rule will work for the time being, when students are learning the concept, but in the future, when the student comes across a more advanced skill of the concept, this “rule” will not apply anymore. In the article is states that mathematics should use clear definitions and precise discussions, yet these “rules” do just the opposite. These rules overgeneralize concepts, discourage conceptual understanding, and simplify math vocabulary.
The most surprising rule I found in this article was the, “please excuse my dear aunt sally,” rule. This
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I also found it surprising that students perceive this rule to be stricter than it really is. For example, there are certain expressions that you can start at different parts and the outcome won’t be affected. I’ve never thought about it like this, but now I know not to emphasize this rule to students so much. In MATH 300 I have came across an expired language term, borrowing. This is when teacher’s and students use the word “borrowing” to explain taking from the number to the left in order to subtract. Instead the word “regrouping” should be used to emphasize place value in numbers. For example, for subtracting 59 from 66, we must cross out the right 6 and make it a 5 and change the right 6 to 16. When we do this, we are technically regrouping 10 from 66 and moving in the the single digit 6. This way we can easily subtract 9 from 16 to get 7 and then we subtract 5 from the new 5 to get 0, therefore 59 from 66 is 7. By using the word, “borrowing,” students are just following procedure and not understanding that there’s a reasoning behind it. Instead, us the word “regrouping,” allows students to have a better conceptual understanding of place value and