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So, how bad is Everyday Math in middle school?


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My older two dds started ps high school last week; that seems to be going well. Younger dd has been making some noises about trying middle school (she's in 6th). She has been very resistant lately to doing any reading (free, assigned, you name it) or writing (she managed to get away with doing almost no writing last year after she decided she didn't like WWS anymore).

 

She does very well with outside deadlines and expectations. I have her signed up for a writing class. I put together a book group. It has been getting tiring trying to find outside motivation. She is also very social and for some reason I have not found the outside social opportunities for her that I had when my older kids were her age. She's lonely and bored and is constantly trying to sneak on the TV or video games (I hide the remotes and put blocks on the computer, but she often circumvents).

 

So, school's only been on for a week, so I thought if we were to give it a shot, we should jump in sooner than later (can always pull her later).

 

Middle school still uses Everyday Math. :glare: Dd is just finishing up AoPS Prealgebra (and did Singapore PM through 6a before that), and we're set to start AoPS Algebra in a couple of weeks. She is willing to afterschool AoPS if we send her - she likes math. So, would having EM at school be too painful? I hear through the grapevine that our school is at least teaching them the standard algorithms in middle school. Could I just think of it as extra math practice? What is EM like in 6th and 7th grades (they don't use it in 8th)?

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Nobody has any experience with EM in middle school?? :bigear:

 

To answer your original title question: very bad

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We do not really have much experience, because EM was the biggest factor that caused us to pull DD out of 6th grade and homeschool. We had gone to the school and looked at the math books and were appalled. (I had not researched EM before our encounter there; now that I have read up on it, my opinion is even worse.)

The last straw were the "fraction strips":

DD came home and told us how they spent all day in math making paper strips and folding them into halves, thirds, quarters... twelfths. (They were allowed to leave out sevenths and elevenths because they were "hard to fold".) The workbook then had partially shaded strips and they used their "fraction strips" to compare which portion might be shaded. ( You'd think 6th graders they should have been able to take a ruler and measure and figure out what portion is shaded without the strip nonsense). For a problem with different length of partially colored strips in the book, the teacher suggested that they create a new set of fraction strips.

That was the last thing we let her do in math in school. We did not walk away, we ran.

 

If your DD has done AoPS prealgebra and is considering starting algebra, EM will not even be useful practice, but a waste of time. I am not saying not to send her, I can very well understand her social needs - but I would caution you not to have any expectations about useful math learning taking place in school.

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To answer your original title question: very bad

 

...

If your DD has done AoPS prealgebra and is considering starting algebra, EM will not even be useful practice, but a waste of time. I am not saying not to send her, I can very well understand her social needs - but I would caution you not to have any expectations about useful math learning taking place in school.

 

Oh, heavens. Well, do you think it will be damaging/confusing in any way, or just a huge waste of time?

 

I've looked up the math homework they've assigned so far, and one "team" is assigning multiplication fact and traditional algorithm practice, so I have some tiny hope that maybe they don't do EM "by the book". I don't know why they don't just chuck it.

 

My brother's kids go the next district over, which is super-high-achieving MIT-or-Harvard or bust. They use EM. But practically every single kid (at least those that achieve high) is enrolled in an afterschool "Russian Math" program. My brother had to hire a tutor to help his ds keep up. It's like they get to crow about their great math program, when the kids are getting all their real math outside of school. :glare:

 

ETA: If we sent her, it would be for a social outlet, as well as the LA (which I'm not overly impressed with, but since I can get dd to do nothing, it will still be an improvement) as well as middle school skills like note-taking and study skills, which I was able to teach older dds at home effectively, but again, this is a very different kid.

Edited by matroyshka
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