I Am A Golden God!

I give my students many opportunities to go up to the board or overhead projector in front of the class and demonstrate how they solve particular problems. Most of them get a kick out of it and enjoy showing me that they know how to solve a particular problem. Well, today I had a student demonstrating how they solved a "lattice-style" multiplication problem. When the student got to the point where she had to multiply 9 x 4, she put the wrong answer in the box. I politely interrupted her and asked if she was sure that 9 x 4 was 27... and if she wanted to go back and check. She started counting by 9's on her fingers and kept getting stuck. She would start all over again, and get stuck all over again. I decided to give her some help.

I asked her if she knew any shortcuts for figuring out her 9's, and she responded in the negative. So I told her to write the numbers 0 through 9 in a column. She did, and it looked like this:

0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

Next, I asked her to make a 2nd column right next to her first column and count down from 9 through 0. It looked like this:

09
18
27
36
45
54
63
72
81
90

Then, we went back to the 9 x 4 and I asked her to count to the 4th number down (36). And I said, "You're right! 9 x 4 = 36."

There was a collective gasp from the entire class. It was like I was practicing witchcraft or making the Statue of Liberty disappear. Every year, I show my kids this little "trick" and I never get the reception that I received today. At that moment, I knew my students saw me as more than just a mere mortal. I was a god today!

Now, if I could only magically make them learn the entire curriculum that way. :-)