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And the official documents that are the equivalent of our "accompanying documents" recommend that: "The children discuss the fact that the addition of units in the first led to the same result that hundreds first. During the year, they adopt a method where they add units in the first ( "Children discuss how adding the first ones gives the same answer as adding the hundreds first. Over time, they move to consistently adding the first digit ones." ).

However, when students from the United Kingdom returning CE2, they already have good skills in mental calculation of an addition and subtraction of two 2-digit numbers: it is not focusing on early on the calculation that promotes raised more mental arithmetic. Moreover, advocating in a first-time use of "expanded coloumn methods" where the student does not lead immediately to say "three" even though they're "three cents" or to say "Three" even though they're "thirty", officials of the education system in United Kingdom in working towards the fight against school failure. It is unclear whether the authors of the draft french make a choice completely opposite.

The storage of digital elementary relations
When looking for reasons which have led the drafters of the project to focus on teaching techniques in early columns, one of them comes immediately to mind: when a student calculates an addition or subtraction in columns, it is led to use several additions or subtractions Elementary (8 + 6, 9 - 3…). He uses them to the units at first, then for the tens, hundreds… perhaps the drafters of the project believe that this exercise plays a crucial role in storing digital these relations. Indeed, the project places great emphasis on these memorisations. We read that CP, students must "remember and use tables of bills" and that CE1, it must "remember and use tables additions and multiplication tables by 2, 3, 4 and 5. These formulations are not very different from those programs in 2002 (the word "construction" has still gone!) But it may be regrettable because we know better today how students memorize the results of additions and basic multiplication. However, the previous formulations on the tables of addition and multiplication suggest that the drafters of the project have not been informed. In particular, they are misinformed that the additions do not remember as the basic multiplication.

To put it simply, storage of digital relations depends on two factors: the repetition and understanding. These factors are both necessary but their contributions are not the same in the case of addition and multiplication. The recitation of multiplication tables to aid their memory. However, on basic additions, not to repeat the strength of relationships that stores them but by making reconstruction increasingly rapidly. And the surest way to make this rapid reconstruction is to teach strategies for calculating thought (7 + 5 = 5 + 2 + 5 = 10 + 2; 8 + 6 = 8 + 2 + 4 = 10 + 4, for example ). If the child uses a rudimentary counting procedure to find the result of 7 + 5, it does help in any way to remember the relationship digital "seven plus five equals twelve." If he recites a table bill repeatedly, it does not effect. Note also that the French school never did recite tables bill as it did multiplication tables (and as it continues, most of the time to do so). Moreover, it is sufficient to engage in a little introspection to be convinced that there is considerably less verbale Association in "eight plus four…" as in "four times eight…" (in the case of multiplication, the answer fuse).

The draft programme is wrong to speak a word for word identical on memorization of additions and multiplications elementary teachers it mask the real conditions of memorization. Its editors speak tables bill but they forget to talk strategies conceived calculation, they do not focus on what is crucial for memorization of basic additions.