As discussed yesterday, the Mastery Technique is a simple 12-word process to help any student build a foundation to learn Math. It can be applied at any level of math, and I’ve even used very successfully it at the graduate school level when I was studying matrices and linear algebra.
Step 1 is “Learn the Facts.” This means doing the “grunt” work of memorizing basic facts, upon which everything else is based. This is the “least fun” of any of the steps, because there’s no immediate payoff, and it does take time and effort. Flash cards can make the process a bit more interesting, and there are some websites (such as ThatQuiz.org) that can be used to automate the process and generate statistics so you can aim to improve “your stats” as you learn.
Unfortunately, in many classrooms, this kind of memorization has been labeled “drill and kill” and is frowned upon, since the calculator is so much faster. This is a very short-sighted view. Without a foundation of skills, you can’t build easily or well. Sure the calculator might be faster, but there are many situations where the calculator will be useless.
For example, let’s say that you’re studying your multiplication facts, or “times tables.” If you do 3 x 8 you’ll get 24, and the calculator is very happy telling you this fact. But when you go further than just rote muliplication, you’ll quickly be asked to use your multiplication facts backwards. Quick! Name all the factor pairs of 24! As of this writing there is no easy calculator command which takes “24” as the input, and lists: 1 x 24, 2 x 12, 3 x 8, and 4 x 6.
When you study your multiplication facts and you’ve mastered them backwards and forwards, you’ll be able to see the number “24” and know all the factor pairs listed above, instantly.
Learn the Facts! The key to this first step of the Mastery Technique is that it frees up the rest of your brain to really think about the rest of the problem at hand. You’re not wasting mental horsepower trying to process the lower-level math facts of a problem, and can focus on the interesting bits of the scenario.
In our next post, we’ll discuss step two of the Mastery Technique: Follow the Rules.