Liping Poetry

This is about the teaching of math and how it’s all connected
How Chinese teachers explain this stuff in lessons they’ve selected

American children and Chinese learn to use subtraction
But only the Chinese teachers could explain the topic to Ma’s satisfaction
American teachers were less aware of what is called decomposition
A more general way to understand numbers, a Chinese teacher tradition

To understand subtracting of three digit numbers, with borrowing, if you will
Kids need to know how numbers work and retain ideas from adding still
If seven hundred forty three minus sixty two
Is a puzzlement for a few
Go back and start with thirteen minus five, since ten and three are easier to see
Then sixty and two or seven hundred and forty and three
Ten
And
Three
Easy to see
Ten and three minus five
Ten minus five plus three
Number play
If it can be put together
It can be taken apart
Compose and
Decompose
Add and then subtract

The topic of dividing by fractions is as simple
As knowing that the undoing of division is multiplication

Doing and Undoing
Liping Through Mathematics

Know how to prove, how to represent in many ways
Know the fundamental laws
Commutative, Associative and Distributive
Associative, Distributive and Commutative
Associate and Distributive and Commutative and Distributive

Liping Through Mathematics
Doing the Dance of Math
Undoing the dance of math?
Doing the undance of math undoing the undance of math doing the dance of math