Fast lookup child

L is not a so diligent girl. But she sometimes finishes the exercise very quickly. Although I found she repeatedly mistook the same problem. For example, in one exercise, 4+7 was always 12. I asked what is equal to 4 + 7. She used fingers, took a little while, but she answered correctly at the end. Then I noticed, ``Wait, if she solve the problem with this speed, how she can finish the exercise so quickly?'' So, I sat down next to her and watched how she solved the problem.

Surprise! She doesn't calculate at all. She just looks up the last pages and copies the answers. What I was impressed was she was so fast. She was faster than me to look up the questions. I understood why she made the same mistakes again and again. I learned a new German sentence, ``Bitte nicht angucken!'' This means, ``Don't cheat by looking.'' though it's hard to translate to English.

Her speed of cheating is impressive, this might be her talent. I don't know that I shall discourage her talent(?). That's a tough call for me, but I believe it is better to know to calculate numbers. So, today, I said ``Bitte nicht angucken!'' to her again. But I still don't know. Teaching is a tough business.

Comments

Why A^{T}A is invertible? (2) Linear Algebra

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Here is my question. The area of parallelogram is the difference of these two rectangles (red rectangle - blue rectangle). This is not intuitive for me. If you also think it is not so intuitive, you might interested in my slides. I try to explain this for hight school students. Slides: A bit intuitive (for me) explanation of area of parallelogram (to my site, external link) .

Lx=d: SundayResearch

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