North Wales Branch

Extract

A meeting of this branch was held on February 20th at the Friars’ School, Bangor—the President, Dr. Bryan, in the chair. Mr. R. W. Jones, Headmaster of Glanadda Elementary School, opened a discussion on the teaching of the foundations of arithmetic to children of 6 or 8 years old. After referring to the difficulty of forming any ideas as to a child’s conception of number, and mentioning instances of the vague answers given by a child who is asked to estimate some large number of objects, Mr. Jones proceeded to show how the four fundamental laws of arithmetic could be gradually and insensibly taught to children by means of experiments involving simple operations in weighing and measuring. He emphasised the necessity for using familiar illustrations in expounding the four rules and brought out two points as worthy of special notice: (1) that in teaching the elements to children it is absolutely necessary to confine one’s attention to small numbers; (2) that the time spent in teaching the multiplication tables to children of 6 or 8 years was not well spent, since for small numbers at any rate, they could be learnt insensibly, and the higher tables could be learnt with much greater facility in the child’s third year at school. Most of those present took part in the interesting discussion which followed, generally expressing their agreement with Mr. Jones’s views.