Thursday, May 27, 2010

I FINALLY LEARNED LONG DIVISION!

I feel so empowered! I CAN DO IT!

Although my co-worker, Lauren Carlile, was a grade behind me in elementary school we both had the same fifth grade teacher: Mrs. Busco. Lauren and I ended up talking about our elementary math experience. I told Lauren that I had struggled struggled struggled with all-things-math until junior high, where the struggle decreased by 2% (likely due to a greater amount of time spent on explanation of concepts). I was a really smart kid-- but math was sticky in my brain; it just didn't compute.

Defending my own honor I said, "Hey! I'm a brilliant history whiz BYU student who tested out of freshman math...I just can't do long division... and once told Dylan that 9+12=23."

Exasperated, Lauren said "but you remember Mrs. Busco's long division, right? Daddy, Mommy, Sister, Brother, sometimes Rover?"

Eh? Noooooo, I do not remember that. I remember learning history and grammar from Mrs. Busco, and and I remember cleaning out Nick Thurber's desk during recess with Heidi Egbert so we'd win the CivilWar unit desk inspection, and I remembered drawing human organ systems and watching Roots-- but I hold no recollection of learning math. Selective memory?

Lauren still remembered Busco's method, so I asked her to teach me. Using our white board at work, she helped me through some problems*. After long division, I converted the remainders into fractions and told Lauren how those worked.
I've always loved fractions. :) It must be all the baking. Lauren hates fractions. I told her "No problem-- you can do calculus!" And she can.

I found this website to use for practice. It's ten times more fun than sudoku.

THANK YOU, LAUREN!


*Daddy= Divide, Mommy= Multiply, Sister= Subtraction, Brother= Bring it down, Rover= Remainder.

2 comments:

Dylan said...

I followed the link and guess what the name of that web site is!? (ok, so you probably already know since you're the one who posted it) It's called "Mr. Martini's Classroom." Since people called me Martini on my mission it made me happy. That's all! I love you.

Rachel EM said...

I actually thought of that when I posted it. I'm glad it made you happy, too.