DT Scenario 1
Scenario: Laura teaching column multiplication Country: UK Grade (student age): Year 5 (age 9-10) Contributed by: Tim Rowland, University of Cambridge, UK Context: national, curricular, professional, other At the time when this lesson was recorded, mathematics in primary schools was prescribed by a National Numeracy Strategy (DfEE, 1999) and a related curriculum framework. The framework suggests progression from mental methods to informal and "expanded" written methods, thence to standard, contracted algorithms. The key focus of this lesson was on teaching column multiplication of whole numbers, specifically multiplying a two-digit number by a single digit number. The intended method is a kind of staging-post between a transparent 'grid' method (see below) and the fully-contracted algorithm. Laura was a graduate pre-service teacher, and the lesson took place in a school-based placement towards…