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AmyZ
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Posted: Wed Mar 21st, 2007 03:20 am |
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Many school districts have adopted the Everyday Mathematics (EM) curriculum. The main EM website states some of the key curriculum features include “Real-life Problem Solving”, “Multiple Methods for Basic Skills Practice”, and “Enhanced Home/School Partnerships”. It’s detractors, such as Tsewei Wang, Ph.D.--Associate Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering of The University of Tennessee in his Review of the Everyday Mathematics Curriculum and Its Missing Topics and Skills find holes in the EM curriculum and fault the curriculum for avoiding classic algorithms and relying heavily on student discovery or invention of methods to solve equations while avoiding emphasis upon memorization of basic math facts.
Over the next several days I will discuss the benefits to EM that I see, some of issues with EM, and methods for afterschooling to compensate for gaps. I cannot claim to be an impartial observer, however: my son’s school district is one that has recently adopted the EM curriculum for primary grades and I have been displeased with many of my second-grade son’s assignments and I have noticed some very concerning trends among the third graders I have been privileged to tutor. My observation is that many of the parents who have expressed satisfaction with or approval of EM have had experience with teachers who enhance the curriculum with external resources.
Please feel free to add your comments or observations to this discussion. I am very interested in understanding what is desirable about Everyday Mathematics (what am I missing?) and how other parents augment their children’s math education as a result of EM being used in their schools.
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AmyZ
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Posted: Wed Mar 21st, 2007 04:03 am |
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Video: Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth (YouTube) by M.J. McDermott.Discussion of poor algorithms taught in EM using 4th and 5th grade examples.
Rebuttle to the above, part 1
Rebuttle to the above, part 2
James Blackburn Lynch, math professor, speakes against MJ McDermott's video.
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AmyZ
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Posted: Fri Mar 23rd, 2007 04:02 am |
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I have had two recent, related experiences with EM that have colored my view of the curriculum..
Example 1: Son’s experience with “borrowing” instruction.
The 2nd grade class was learning the basics of “borrowing” (first time seen in this spiral method curriculum). My son does well in math with instruction. I had brushed over the concept of borrowing when he was in first grade when we were figuring out how much some books were going to be if we took one out of our order, so he had seen the concept before. (See note below.) He left the first homework worksheet at school (not sure if it was intentional) but he knew what the topic was, so I printed out some relevant worksheets, went over how to borrow again including what in the heck he was borrowing and why (including the question I never have had a satisfactory answer for: why do we call it borrowing if we never give it back?) and let him go to work. In checking his work I noticed he had a difficulty when the number being borrowed from was 0, so we went over that pretty thoroughly in the margins. He knew he was supposed to show his work, so he left his scratching out and penciling in.
Now, a couple weeks before when they had done carrying EM went into a great hullabaloo over some odd algorithm involving adding multiple times sort of like multi-digit multiplication in my world. I showed him carrying. He got it and did his papers that way. They came back pretty red with the teacher showing the EM way. He didn’t seem at all upset about it, though, so I figured she was just showing him the way the book said.
The day after his first experience in class with borrowing he reported the teacher gave him extra work in class and sent home the previous night’s homework and additional homework. None of the equations was as difficult as those I gave him (no borrowing from 0; no double borrowing). The work he was supposed to show baffled me. Why he should want to do multiple lines of subtraction with odd addition stuff thrown in I could not fathom. One sheet did ask for ballpark estimates (rounding each number to the nearest ten and subtracting that). I told him that seemed like a pretty good idea to check work and asked him to compare his ballparks to the actuals he calculated using borrowing for a self check. He turned that in the day before a parent-teacher conference.
The teacher brought up math, first chuckling over forgetting to bring home worksheets and then saying she knew we worked with him at home, but he needed to learn the algorithm EM taught and show his work that way.
Me: Is he getting the answers wrong?
Teacher: No, but he needs to do it that way.
Me: Why?
Teacher: Because that’s the way we have to teach it now.
Me: Why??
Teacher: That’s just the way we have to do it.
Me: But why? If he’s getting the right answer in arithmetic, why does he have to do it that way?
Teacher then said since we seemed to feel so strongly about it she wouldn’t press him to do it that way.
I don’t think that’s exactly what the EM curriculum wants to have happen, either on the teacher’s part or mine (I think the kids are supposed to discover the borrowing concept on their own). But our son’s teacher, who is very bright and experienced, took that away from the teacher instructions. Seems to be an issue at some level.
Example 2: Tutoring 3rd graders.
As I mentioned, I have been tutoring 3rd graders on many Saturdays this school year. It seems that borrowing came up in the 3rd grade schedule at about the same time. The grade teacher noticed this fact as well: of the 15 or so students there to work on math not one, not one knew how to get the answer when “borrowing” was required. The teacher was going to bring it up at his school’s next faculty meeting, but what about the other schools? And how many other kids who weren’t at Saturday School don’t understand borrowing? In third grade?
In all fairness, most of the kids in Saturday tutoring were referred by teachers because they need some extra help in various areas, but there has never been another subject where NONE of the students had the vaguest notion how they were supposed to tackle the problem, other than they were supposed to do something about crossing out one of the numbers and “adding a 1” in some cases.
I was able to sit with three separate students with math over the course of three hours. Two of them “got it” when I explained borrowing using the algorithm I grew up with (one of the kids gave me the BIGGEST smile with an astonished and happy “I get it!” that made me glow for the rest of the day). The third had managed to dance along this far (although I don’t know if she’s been in our school system with EM the whole time) without learning place value, so I couldn’t adequately explain borrowing and we worked on the place value concept.
Many possibilities exist as to why that child had not learned place value by the middle of third grade. For example, she is a very engaging pleaser who is easily distracted and I can see where it would be hard to spot this in a classroom setting, but I don’t think EM did her any favors in enabling teachers to spot the root problem. That student could skate with shape museums and number grids and calculator use when she needed to be learning to mastery “one group of ten with none left over” means 10.
There are simply too many bad things I’m seeing and not enough good. EM isn’t giving the kids I’ve seen the tools to figure out simple word problems and it’s not giving them enough drill to know that 4 + 5 = 9 without a calculator once someone tells them the equation.
For these reasons among others math as become an afterschooling priority in our house.
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Note: I realized a couple weeks ago that I do actually spiral with son when I teach him, but my method of spiraling is different from EM’s. I bring up and brush through concepts that he will encounter in upper grades but teach “grade level” (well, above his actual grade, but at his ability level) to mastery. I include known concepts in review of other concepts. An EM teacher’s idea newsletter included the following description: “concepts and skills [are] introduced and then revisited many times in [a] year, as well as up to two years following that before they were expected to be ‘secure’.” It is their claim that many if not most children learn better this way.
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AmyZ
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Posted: Thu Apr 5th, 2007 07:14 am |
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What I like about EM
Some aspects of EM appeal to me very much and I believe these aspects could enrich any math program.
1. Math Games. Although I believe EM in general pays too little attention to memorization of math facts, the curriculum does introduce a number of games for students to practice basic facts in a fun way. “Top It” (a less controversial name for the game I knew as “War” growing up) has numerous variations, including addition, multiplication, and fraction. Some versions require special cards (Fraction Top It, for example) but most can be played using standard decks of cards or “Go Fish” decks, which are available at a reasonable price in many stores.
There are a number of math games listed in educator resources that aren’t in the parent information, but two others that I like are “Name That Number” (students come up with a way to express a target number using the numbers on cards in their hand) and “Two-Fisted Penny Game” (one student holds a number of pennies in each hand and another has to add to get the answer). Obviously, these games are aimed at the early elementary student—I don’t know what math games are available to late elementary students. There are also a number of computer games that a teacher can use in class.
Math games provide students with an entertaining alternative to standard flash card review. Finding fun ways to drill the basics can encourage some students to spend more time reviewing than with standard worksheet drills. Of course, if all one has to do are math games, those would get boring after a while. My son expressed disappointment when he was given the opportunity to play the math games the day he joined me in Saturday school, so I know they aren’t the absolute answer to getting kids to practice math facts.
2. “Family Letters” and “HomeLinks”. In no other subject do I, the parent, have as much detailed information about what my son is studying in school as I do in math thanks to the “Family Letters” and “HomeLinks” sent home as part of the EM curriculum. Each unit is prefaced with a letter home giving the adults at home suggestions for additional practices and many day to day lessons encourage family involvement. While I may not like some of the lessons, I do appreciate knowing what the lessons are, in large part so I can plan afterschooling to complement the lessons instead of clashing with them.
3. Availability of Course Overview material online. On those occasions when my son has forgotten his homework or has been absent I have been able to use the on-line material to create alternative work for my son and make sure he understands the concepts presented.
4. The variety of topics covered. I like that many different topics are covered in the course of a school year. Geometry isn’t relegated to sometime in third or fourth grade, never to be seen at any other time. Instead, it is integrated into each grade, as is learning to count money and make change and brief glimpses of graphs. As I mentioned previously, I do use a spiral teaching method with my son and I think it is a valuable teaching method.
Next up I’ll discuss overall weak points of EM.
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AmyZ
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Posted: Tue Apr 10th, 2007 04:09 am |
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You don’t have to look far to find critics of EM (also called Chicago Math). Below is a sample of the negative reactions I found with a quick Internet search.
http://www.wpri.org/WIInterest/Vol10No1/Vukmir10.1.pdf
2+2=5: FUZZY MATH INVADES WISCONSIN SCHOOLS
by LEAH VUKMIR
This pdf file is a discussion of “new, new” math in general with EM (Chicago Math) just one example of possible programs. Some favorite quotes:
According to Harvard University Math Professor, Dr. Wilfried Schmid, there is some value in the [collaborative] practices... "These are used by good teachers all over the world. The problem comes when these ideas are pushed to the point of becoming an ideology — as they are in the 'Investigations in Numbers, Data and Space' math program. Many teachers using this program manage to do a good job, by using their own judgment to filter out the ideology. When the manuals are taken literally, then you get into trouble...
While the debate regarding math rages on, one thing remains certain: Parents in Wisconsin are not idly waiting for the experts to come to a consensus of opinion. Time does not stand still for young children at critical ages when fundamental math principles must be learned. Parents are finding their own ways to deal with the flaws they see in the new curricula.
http://www.nychold.com/em.html
Reviews of UCSMP Everyday Mathematics (University of Chicago School Mathematics Project Everyday Math)
by New York City “HOLD” (group for “logical discussions of mathematics reform)
This collection of links to articles about EM notes that there have been revisions to the EM curriculum and there may be holes in older reviews of the curriculum, but they were unable to find a comprehensive list of changes (a problem I have had).
http://www.mathematicallycorrect.com/bishop4.htm
AN EVALUATION OF SELECTED MATHEMATICS TEXTBOOKS
Submitted to the Core Knowledge Foundation by WAYNE BISHOP, Professor of Mathematics, California State University, Los Angeles
May 1997
"In normal classrooms with normal teachers, I would characterize these materials as `dangerous.' My impression is that it would be very difficult to be sure that appropriate material has been covered adequately. One can expect a very high degree of teacher variability. Knowledgeable teachers, well grounded in the materials, may be able to pull it off; at least it's clear from the assessment book that there are some things that the children are supposed to know. There is almost no routine practice, although a small amount is built into the activities."
http://eklhad.net/chimath.html
The Effect of Chicago Math on Everyday Students
“This is an open letter to the Troy school district, Troy MI, regarding Chicago Math, which was recently introduced into the curriculum.”
At this point I would like to make a distinction between the kid-friendly story problems, and the confusing algorithms and procedures, introduced by Chicago Math. I like some of the story problems, dividing 47 pieces of candy among three friends, for instance, and I don't want to throw out the baby with the bath water. We should continue to incorporate these types of real-world problems in our curriculum. However, there is no point in presenting the above story problem until the student can divide 3 into 47, almost without thinking. The process should be automatic, like driving a car. Unfortunately the (otherwise helpful) story problems are brought in far too early in Chicago Math….
http://www.brianrude.com/chi-mth.htm
Chicago Math
Brian D. Rude 1996
Detailed report from a math teacher/parent.
The problems I am concerned with cannot usually be pinned down to page and paragraph number. Rather I think there are some troublesome premises that underlie the writing of this series. These premises are not explicitly stated. They must be inferred from the text by careful reading and reflection. And when these premises are stated they don't really sound too bad. The effects of these premises are often only subtly different from the effects of more sensible premises. Indeed the writers might even deny some of the premises that I identify. Or they might defend the premises. My argument is that the net result of these premises is that learning math becomes more difficult and less satisfying than it should be...
http://www.illinoisloop.org/md_chimath.html
Analysis of studies detailed in the booklet, "Perspectives of Everyday Mathematics: University of Chicago Math Program Student Performance Data"
by Mary Damer
July 24, 1996
Very detailed descriptions of the flaws in studies EM uses in explanations of the program.
The author also adds advice to parents:
On a mother-to-mother aside, I would advise that next year you go to school and look at your children's "journals" that accompany the math program at least once a month. The home links that you will receive at home will not provide enough information to tell you what your child is doing during the school day. (AmyZ notes: this is different from our experience with EM.) Two friends of mine had to hijack the journals from their children's classes (the teacher wouldn't let them leave the room) and xerox them in an overnight copy center. When they looked at the journals, they realized that their third graders had been incorrectly adding with all carrying problems and raised this concern with the teacher. She replied that it was important for the children to work out their own strategy independently and that if they didn't get it during this spiral, they would during the next one.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_3_7_03mc.html
How Not to Teach Math
New York’s chancellor Klein’s plan doesn’t compute.
by Matthew Clavel
7 March 2003
First person account of a Teach for America Corps teacher’s experience with EM in the Bronx:
The curriculum’s failure was undeniable: not one of my students knew his or her times tables, and few had mastered even the most basic operations; knowledge of multiplication and division was abysmal. Perhaps you think I shouldn’t have rejected a course of learning without giving it a full year (my school had only recently hired me as a 23-year-old Teach for America corps member). But what would you do, if you discovered that none of your fourth graders could correctly tell you the answer to four times eight?
http://www.reformk12.com/archives/000028.nclk Comparison of brochures from EM and Saxon math for charter school.
http://www.mathematicallycorrect.com/everyday.htm
Letter recommending California state reject EM. Note that this was before one of the “major revisions” to the curriculum; however, that revision reportedly included more math fact practice and the amount of math fact practice was not an issue in this recommendation against EM.
Article on Chatham University website
(extremely long url was interfering with the display)
Teacher reports on issues with using games only for math facts.
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I also searched for articles and journal entries containing positive remarks about EM. Although they seem to be fewer and farther between, there are some teachers who like the program overall.
http://www.proteacher.net/discussions/showthread.php?t=35504
Discussion of EM on a forum for teachers. Some teachers liked it very much—others not at all. One interesting statement, “It is better for high students and really bad for low students. They are never given a chance to just absorb the material.”
http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=5328020&tstart=0
Very long and circuitous discussion of EM on Drexel University forum. There are some in favor of teaching the “lattice algorithm” for multiplication here.
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In the end, it seems there are some benefits to the program, but it seems to be very difficult to implement successfully. Not only does a teacher have to be talented overall, but specifically talented in augmenting this particular curriculum. In the cases where the teacher/curriculum mix has been just right there have been some great results, but there seem to be far more failures than positive results. Perhaps it would be best to look at the average practice with EM instead of hoping for the best possible scenario in all cases.
Next section will include afterschooling techniques that seem to be affective in conjunction with Everyday Math. Please add any experiences you have had with EM and any tips or tricks you found most useful in making sure your children have a complete math education while using EM in school.
Last edited on Sun Aug 5th, 2007 03:58 pm by AmyZ
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AmyZ
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Posted: Wed Apr 11th, 2007 05:22 am |
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Because we haven't been too pleased with the implementation of EM at our son's school, and because he seems to test higher in "potential" for math than actually in math problems, and because he claims he "isn't good in math", we have decided to make math instruction a key part of our afterschooling.
We tried Singapore Math introductory workbooks when son was in kindergarten, but for some reason they didn't click with him. He would do them when he was told, but he wouldn't reach for them on his own. I've been wary of starting another "complete course" also, for fear of overdoing math for him (I never want him to dread afterschooling time together!).
What has been working for son has been a combination of the DK Math Made Easy workbooks (originally at grade level, but we just bumped up after finding out how good son was with math) and separate worksheets to emphasize new concepts, such as carrying and borrowing for math and subtraction. We do a lot of work with math facts as well. This is the reason you'll see a good number of math worksheet sites referenced here: I've already done that homework!
I like the DK Math Made Easy workbooks because they cover a lot of different subjects as EM does, but but they don't have a lot of explanation included. They are intended to be a secondary source of practice, not a primary text. We have also tried Spectrum math workbooks, and, while they are good for math fact review and they have some very nice word problems, they do not have the breadth of topics that Math Made Easy or EM for that matter have.
What I try to do is mirror or stay ahead of what son is doing in school. Although some resources I've been reading about EM have indicated that parents have a hard time gaining insight into the classroom, that has not been our experience with respect to math. The "Math Links" and "Family Letters" that come home along with the almost daily worksheets (most of which son can complete very easily) along with the main EM website (cited above) have made it easy for me to see what he's doing (papers sent home) and where he is going (correlate to main website) and guide work from there. I also make it a point to teach him the traditional algorithm for problem solving and I go to bat for him if he gets called on it.
With the third graders I tutor, I don't try to follow the EM curriculum any more. After consulting with the main teacher following the worrisome borrowing experience I described above, we agreed that the kids needed more math fact practice and I found a lot of worksheets on line (The Learning Page is one of my favorites as it integrates math and science) that we have been using. He brought up the issue of the kids not being able to borrow halfway through the third grade in a faculty meeting but was told they had to continue using the school-board-mandated curriculum. Other teachers have worked independently to make EM work as a very basic spine and then integrate other sources of drill. The EM math games do seem to help, as long as they aren't overused to the point that no one seems to care if the mouse works properly or not.
I do wish that the district curriculum was stronger and emphasized the traditional algorithms for simple problem solving as a building block for more complex calculations later on in life, but I do like some aspects of the program and might consider using it as an afterschooling resource if the school used another curriculum. It will be interesting to see what EM does to the overall math scores in the district... I don't have high hopes for meeting NCLB with EM as The Only Approved text.
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AmyZ
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Posted: Mon Apr 16th, 2007 04:41 am |
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I was thinking about Everyday Math on our recent trip (during the long car ride, not at the destination!), and I came to some additional conclusions about this curriculum.
I think there is a basic misunderstanding about what "mathematics" elementary school children ought to learn and what "arithmetic" elementary school children ought to learn. Furthermore, there are few in the curriculum selection departments who seem to be making this distinction.
First, definitions (with thanks to Merriam-Webster Online):
mathematics: 1 : the science of numbers and their operations, interrelations, combinations, generalizations, and abstractions and of space configurations and their structure, measurement, transformations, and generalizations
arithmetic: 1 a : a branch of mathematics that deals usually with the nonnegative real numbers including sometimes the transfinite cardinals and with the application of the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division to them
EM is a lousy arithmetic curriculum, but it is a good curriculum for conveying mathematics as a whole. Unfortunately, if I read their literature correctly the EM authors seem to state that arithmetic is unimportant. In a way they are correct: if you take a calculus class you will be graded on your process for solving an equation--your grade won't necessarily be docked because you made a mistake in adding two plus two in your 47th step.
But should elementary school students be working on calculus? I would say the answer is, for the most part, no.
As I look through successful implementations of EM, I see teachers augmenting the curriculum to focus on arithmetic. Artithmetic is the branch of mathematics that that focuses on the basic computations everyone needs to buy food at a store or figure out how much money they need to make to buy that food and pay rent each month. It is one of the least theoretical branches of mathematics, and generally students in elementary are "concrete learners": the "average" elementary school child does not think in theoretical terms but rather in terms of what they can see or touch. Elementary school is the time to lay the groundwork for theoretical math: This is what a number is. This is how you can use numbers to get answers you need.
If EM were to lay a solid base of arithmetic and overlay a spiral of higher mathematics, I would be ecstatic about this program. If it were to teach the main US algorithms for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and then spiral the idea that these are not the only algorithms that exist and you may find one of these easier for you, I would embrace this curriculum as the best for my son.
Unfortunately, the priorities seem to have been flipped in EM. The ideas that work well for college students are being foisted off on elementary students. Children who have not yet entered into the time in their lives when they can think theoretically are being forced to learn in a manner contrary to their abilities, especially if their teachers don't have the resources to provide (or the ability to buck the system to be able to introduce) supplementary arithmatic work.
Afterschooling can truly help in this instance. I think I'm going to focus the majority of afterschooling math time on arithmetic, showing how the basic arithmetic is the building block to solving bigger problems. I'm not going to try to mirror the EM curriculum too much (an occassional jumping off point notwithstanding!), but rather just go forward with the basics I know my child needs in addition to exposure to higher math.
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Shay
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Posted: Thu Apr 19th, 2007 05:17 pm |
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Amy Z said:
If EM were to lay a solid base of arithmetic and overlay a spiral of higher mathematics, I would be ecstatic about this program. If it were to teach the main US algorithms for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and then spiral the idea that these are not the only algorithms that exist and you may find one of these easier for you, I would embrace this curriculum as the best for my son.
Bingo! Those are my thoughts exactly, except I haven't been able to condense them so nicely.
I feel absolutely compelled to do fact practice with my dc now that they are in EM. It's not absolutely lacking by any means, but isn't incrementally introduced and drilled (from what I've seen in both 1st and 2nd grade). My ds (1st) has been given flimsy paper fact triangles to work on at home.....all the families to 18 . In addition to fact practice, I will teach the standard (efficient) algorithims to my dc. I certainly don't think they'll be harmed by being introduced to different ones, but as my dd (8) said "it takes so much longer, mom."
More thoughts to come later.......but I am absolutely sick of nightly homelinks (the nightly homework). Sick. My dd8 just breaks down and cries about it now (she didn't used to, but enough is enough) and would rather be outside since the daylight lasts longer ......or playing a game, or drawing.....you know, just being a kid. I also feel that some of the assignments "dumb" me down as a parent. For example, with my 1st grader we were to go around the house and count all of the clocks and discuss their similarities/differences. Do they assume we don't live together and converse about things until they mandate it on a certain evening?
As far as supplementing with Singapore, it used to be easy before EM. Now, we are all over the place........literally. My ds (5th) has done concepts in SM 3B, 4A/B, 5a/B and 6. My 2nd grader has touched upon topics in 4A (division with remainders). My 1st grader, this week, has to tell time to the 5 minutes! I simply cannot coordinate that with SM as I used to do. The good thing is that they are all doing okay with this (not the case with many other students) as they seem to be very math oriented. But, they do seem to feel a lot of pressure about math this year.
Amy, we'll get through this together and find a way to make sure our kiddos don't have gaps, I'm sure of it. I, too, have thought of Rightstart games, but just don't want to do more games if they do them in school.
I'll keep you posted. Lots of total rambling here!
Shay
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AmyZ
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Posted: Sun Apr 22nd, 2007 05:47 am |
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Amy, we'll get through this together and find a way to make sure our kiddos don't have gaps, I'm sure of it.
Shay, I know you're right. I am sad that our kids will get through despite EM instead of because of it, though.
I wish I understood what our school system wanted to accomplish by embracing EM. I wish I knew what they wanted to accomplish so I could try to help them find a truly good program to get them where they want to be.
In the mean time I'm going to capture stories about it to bring up at any community meetings I can attend and try to help as many kids as I can through it.
One of the things I decided this year was not to try to keep up with the way school switches from topic to topic. My son is happily learning things that have nothing to do with what he is currently studying in school. It seems to work better that way, especially since I don't have to be "head to head" with the ideas being raised in the class--I can teach him the things I want him to learn and give him the tools to use EM as a growth experience.
By the way, I just logged onto the main University of Chicago EM Site and saw this: Please pardon our dust. We are reorganizing and updating this site with information about the 2007 edition of Everyday Mathematics.
I didn't see any other construction evidence, though. I hope they put out some information about the differences between the editions this time....
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Shay
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Posted: Fri May 4th, 2007 02:12 pm |
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Reading my ds's (1st grade) "Family Letter" this morning, I am struck by the sentence "The concept of place value that children have worked on since Kindergarten Everyday Mathematics will be taught on a more formal level in this unit......."
Thinking/pondering out loud here.....but, I think this is why our school has had a bumpy start to this program. We introduced it cold-turkey across the board. I would liken it to taking a child straight from the baby pool and pushing them off the high-dive. Our students didn't work on the concept of place value that EM 1 is now getting more formal with. Some of my friend's children are desperately trying to tread in the deep water.
Since I homeschooled my 1st grader for K, I taught him place value as well as memorization of math facts to 10. We also did lots of work with money. He was ready for it and has flourished. I know firsthand that the others in our school's K program did not get that.....math was very, very light. Of course those little ones had problems adjusting.
I absolutely do not get the rationale behind coin representation (little circles with letters in them) in this program......but that's another post .
I recently asked a 2nd grade teacher (one my oldest had in 2nd grade) what she thought of the program.....her face got all contorted. She said her problem is knowing how to *grade* the children. EM math tells them it's okay that they not master the topics, so how in the world was she to assign grades. Good point! It will be interesting to see if she has an easier time with next years batch of students.....the ones who have done EM 1st grade.
In reading what I've written, I realize that most is negative. Actually, there are plenty of things I've seen this year that I've liked..... and I don't necessarily think its an awful program.....just one that you can't start all at once. So, throwing this program in all at once across all grade levels, to me, seems to have caused most of the problems. Just my opinion........
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Cassie
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Posted: Fri May 4th, 2007 08:33 pm |
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Hmmm- I dread possibly moving to VA and having to deal with EM and all I hear about it! I also dread as a teacher being dictated what math curriculum I will have to use.
Actually, RS is a spiral math, but I absolutely love it because it teaches hard-core math and expects mastery good mastery before spiraling more. So maybe it isn't so much the spiral approach as the content?? I don't think I would like the cute family homework, but perhaps it is a good thing for less involved parents.
Shay, would your teacher be willing to modify your homework, knowing that you AS your own math at home? If your daughter is crying every night, the teacher should consider changing something.... (you would think??)
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AmyZ
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Posted: Sat May 5th, 2007 12:16 pm |
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Note that not all of Virginia (or even all of Northern Virginia) uses EM--just us lucky ones! *grin*
Judging from all the various messages and what not I've been reading about EM over the past month or son, the worst time with it is when schools first change. Quite often, it seems, the folks doing the implementing go overboard on making sure that all of the instructions in the teachers' texts are followed to a T when they first get going and they don't allow teachers' natural teaching style to come through and in particular they don't encourage any type of supplement of math drill worksheets. Once they get over themselves it seems it works a bit better.
I've also been looking more into whether my son is a visual-spatial learner. I think he is, and one of the things that indicates this to me is that the little blips of information that pop up without context at times in EM in the name of spiraling drive him batty. I try to give him a window into the bigger picture and that seems to have been working. "What they're trying to do here by asking you to find a bunch of different ways measurments crop up in magazine articles is that math, and specifically measuring, is something that comes up in your life every day. You already know that, but some kids don't, so they're trying to get them to discover it. Give some examples to prove you know about measuring and everything will work out fine."
AND he has started picking up the other math workbook on his own--so I'm happy! 
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Cassie
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Posted: Sat May 5th, 2007 01:27 pm |
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AND he has started picking up the other math workbook on his own--so I'm happy!
Horray!!
I know that when we were about to start K in VA Beach (moved away in October, so ds was only in K there for a few weeks), they were doing EM, so I assumed it was a VA thing!
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Shay
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Posted: Mon May 7th, 2007 07:11 pm |
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Cassie,
I wasn't ignoring your question, I'm just trying to not be on the computer much (if any at all) on the weekend. 
For various reasons, it would appear that my dd was getting "special favors" if her homework was any different.  So, we are the Little Engine that Could and we are about to the top of that peak.......and we will be yelling "WOO HOOO!!!" when we descend on the last day of school (and last day of homelinks) when it finally comes around.
Also, my dd's teacher is very, very strict and she even scares me  . If we run into problems next year, I will definitley consider it.......that would be wonderful if I could do Singapore at night for homework instead of homelinks. Hmmmmm.............
Shay
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Cassie
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Posted: Tue May 8th, 2007 03:56 am |
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For various reasons, it would appear that my dd was getting "special favors" if her homework was any different.
It is called "differentiation" (as I am sure you know, but why would a teacher not know?)!!
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AmyZ
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Posted: Sun May 13th, 2007 03:15 am |
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I can think of a number of unfortunate reasons a teacher might not differentiate for a child, most having to do with school dynamics (the principal says all children are "gifted", for example, so no child should ever need anything different/more advanced than the other students).
Here is an interesting video from a Washington State math professor concerning the downward trend of mathematics he has noticed personally. It's twelve and half minutes long, but the last three minutes or so deal specifically with Professor Preston's view of how to fix Washington State, so if that doesn't interest you I'd suggest stopping the video at around nine minutes when he shows a slide asking how Washington state can reverse the trend. This video only mentions EM in passing, focusing instead on curricula the professor's sons used in middle and high schools, but Professor Preston speaks to the problems he sees with the general style of spiral teaching and the discovery method.
I would like to know more about the facts behind his statement concerning the "dramatic" difference a change away from the EM and other "new new" math curricula made for California students. I'll let you know what I find when I get to that...
In the mean time, we're working on the basic math facts and traditional algorithms here.
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AmyZ
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Posted: Tue Sep 4th, 2007 08:10 pm |
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Just when I start thinking that EM is pretty good I get a dose of reality...
Today was my son's first day of 3rd grade and he had "math" homework:
Numbers All Around Museum
Find as many different kinds of numbers as you can. Record the numbers in the table below. ...
Find objects or pictures with numbers on them to bring to school.
For practice they had to go over the 5,2,7 fact family.
Not to toot our own horn here, but my son waxed poetic over an addition worksheet from Afterschoolers. He isn't happy with the level of work, either.
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Shay
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Posted: Wed Sep 5th, 2007 02:26 pm |
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That is interesting, Amy, because my 3rd grader has not done that "Number Museum" (at least not as homework) thank goodness! Things such as that drive me bonkers  .
I think one of our first homework pages dealt with "mean, median, and mode", which dd had trouble with (and she's very math capable). We have math vocabulary each week, which I don't care for either.
I am doing math facts every morning with all of my dc......my 3rd grade dd has the most trouble with this and this is troubling me greatly. She is so math bright and her lack of quick recall of facts could slow her down and cause her to not like math. Part of the problem is her attitude . She crumpled up her math page yesterday morning when her younger brother announced "done!" He has a different page, so it's not that they are doing the same one. She still counts on her fingers for goodness sake. I have tried getting her to use the "making 10" concept from Singapore math, but she says it's harder because you have to both add and subtract in your head to do that. DS 7, on the other hand learned the "make 10 trick", uses it, and it helps him.
Ds7, 2nd grade this year, hasn't yet gotten his Homelinks workbook (the school hasn't gotten them in yet) and so his homework has consisted of time tests......I much prefer this!
So, math facts are my top priority to AS with EM this year. Next in line is learning standard algorithims.
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AmyZ
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Posted: Thu Sep 6th, 2007 05:32 am |
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Shay, it would seem your children's teacher skpped at least to the fifth unit, Organizing and Displaying data. I wonder if she'll spend any time explaining it or if they're just going to have to wait and come back to it...
*sigh*
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Shay
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Posted: Thu Sep 6th, 2007 04:52 pm |
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Actually, the Family Letter says "unit 1" , and the homework assignment with mean/median/mode was HL 1*5. She understood the concept, but kept getting the vocabulary/terminology bumbled up.
I've had trouble this year with dd knowing the answers are on the parent's letter for the homelinks.....she tries to sneak it and just fill in answers. Along with discussions about work and honesty, I have to hide it from her .
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