The Ghost of Learning Gaps Past

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This is the ghost of math that will come back to haunt you forever. It’s math facts, particularly times tables, multiplication tables.

If you don’t memorize those early, then everything afterward, it gets much, much harder than it really needs to be.

So now every algebra problem is really an arithmetic problem, a handful of arithmetic problems, and you just can’t think about the algebra that’s going on ‘cause you’re so focused on these arithmetic problems ‘cause it’s a full brain problem ‘cause you never memorized your math facts!

And you can’t build fluency that way. See, that’s why gaps in your fundamentals are so costly.

They don’t stay behind you. They just keep on following you forever and ever and ever like a stalker just trying to sabotage your every move as you climb up this ladder of math slowing down your progress, weighing you down, and the higher you climb, the heavier they become.

Further reading:

• Students Need To Memorize Math Facts
• The Math Death Spiral: How Knowledge Gaps Lead to Student Failure

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