I don’t know about you, but as a secondary school teacher I’ve not often thought about teaching some of the maths fundamentals. We assume students can already add, subtract, multiply and divide single digit numbers. Secondary teachers don’t pay enough credit to primary teachers, who have the critical job of embedding concepts like place value.
But sometimes students come in without these skills, and I’ve always found breaking them down really difficult.
This video is lovely It’s one of a series, talking about the progression of skills from first principles. I highly recommend all maths teachers watch them. I will certainly be trialling some of these ideas. I found the talk of five and tens grids particularly interesting.