Tips and Tricks Elementary School Mathematics

Preface

When I started on this document, I had the intention to write something useful and helpful to the juniors of the elementary schoolers. However, I soon realized that it was a non-doable task as the language proficiency of such schoolers would be inadequate to understand the abstraction of the topics I intent to cover. Hence, I changed my mind and am now writing something that educators ( parents, tutors, teachers ) could use and help transfer the concept to these schoolers.

In addition, I would add that I am not trying to teach nor cover the syllabus that are intended but am trying to add to specific topics especially time-tables. My aim is to help increase the schoolers mind-agility when dealing with numbers for I believe that it is this lack of ability that will hamper them when they are dealing with abstraction later on in life.

Numbering System

The majority of countries in the world use the Decimal numbering system. Under this system numbers are represented with the combination of these digit/numbers : 0, 1, 2 , 3, 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9. To help understanding of the definitions of these digits I will resort to using visual aids.

From the visual aids you can see that there is only 1 true number and that is one ( 1 ). The higher ( in value ) numbers are just collections, groups, packaging or combinations of 1.
For example, 4 is just merely a group of 4 ones ( 1111 ). I am not trying to unteach what kids learn from educators or schools but just trying to point out that the numbers are just groups.
This is very important when I touch on Arithmetic further down this document.

Representation of a number

A number in this system is represented as a row or strings of digits eg. 573893 The value of each digit is calculated as such:

The number 573893 therefore has a value of five hundred seventy three thousand eight hundred and ninety three.

What is zero

Zero has no value and it’s not even a number.
Zero is enigmatic. As a digit it is just a place holder but, as a number it has value but even that value is non-deterministic and most academics steer away from defining its value, so we will just leave it after stating the followings:

• any number + 0 = that number
• 0 + any number = that number
• any number multiply by 0 = 0
• 0 multiply by any number = 0

The result of any number divided by zero is not determined so don’t ever do this.
0 divided by any number is defined to be zero ( I do not agree with this but am not able to give a better answer so accepted that grudgingly )
Don’t even bother to understand the statements above just remember them.
Zero is a plug-gap for a non- perfect numbering system.
These operations with 0 do not exist in real life see footnote.