What do you think about "New New Math"?

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The thing is I recall hearing parents carp about new math and teacher content knowledge when I was a youngster (more groups of ten years ago than I care to find the sum of). It just goes on, with new, new names.

 

I can think of few things less effective at teaching diversity than the typical ed department required diversity symposium/lab where the ed students share their diverse backgrounds to "better" understand the populations they will teach. I remember watching video of one for a committee I was on and thinking just how homogenous they all were. It is stuff like this that fills far too much of the ed degree/certification.

 

A look at the middle school Praxis exams for math is a real eye opener.

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Nonetheless, I think it's troubling when a kid's first grade math homework confuses the student's parents.

 

I have a copy of the first and second grade texts (Reform Math texts) most widely used in my province, and quite frankly, it's not necessarily poor math knowledge that's going to stump the parents. Much of what is in them is ambiguous, poorly written, or just wrong.

 

One has a pattern of one trapezoid, then three, then five. The question is "What comes next? Extend the pattern." Given that my child presumably doesn't know much algebra in the first part of second grade, how do they want the rule stated?

 

The instructions to the parents are "Look around your home with your child for patterns. Ask your child, "is this an increasing pattern? Why or why not?"

 

What do they mean, increasing pattern? I definitely didn't do the technical definition of an increasing pattern in primary school. I still don't know whether, say, y=x^2 qualifies as an increasing pattern. "Increasing pattern" is not defined in the book.

[stripe]

I have a copy of the first and second grade texts (Reform Math texts) most widely used in my province, and quite frankly, it's not necessarily poor math knowledge that's going to stump the parents. Much of what is in them is ambiguous, poorly written, or just wrong.

 

One has a pattern of one trapezoid, then three, then five. The question is "What comes next? Extend the pattern." Given that my child presumably doesn't know much algebra in the first part of second grade, how do they want the rule stated?

You know, I've seen examples of tests (like SATs or other high-school level national exam type things) where there is actually more than one correct answer to sequence problems, but clearly the test writers had a very narrow view. I can't find any examples, though, but I am certain I've read about this. I hate much of the pattern stuff for kids, like

ABA -- what comes next? gee, it could be, ABAABAABA, or ABABABABA, or maybe ABACABAC, who knows? I always like when my kids come up with something unusual instead of the simplest answer.

 

I hope I'm not frantically screaming...or am I? Because honestly, it does freak me out when I can't figure out a problem from my son's year 3 MEP problem book,...or understand the bar models from his Singapore 3 book...not every problem, but occasionally they do pop up. Is it that I have a subpar understanding of math (which I don't mind admitting), or are these problems HARD?

I think it's that the presentation is different and therefore they are hard, but I have seen posts by some people who do not seem to want to take the time to learn the different thing-- ever! -- and then complain that the problems are hard, even in reception or something. That seems unwise to me -- how can you teach it if the WHOLE THING (not an occasional problem) is a mystery? However, I can say that I remember my mom confusing me when trying to help with calculus, because she'd forgotten things, not because she never knew them, and I was a little irritated with her for her weak memory!

[creekland]

 

I honestly believe that my son at age 10 would be able to pass my graduate level education courses.

All of them.

 

I'd be very very surprised if he couldn't.

 

I'm very much in favor of ending education degrees. I say this mainly due to my degree (MAT... half of my credits are math graduate courses and half are education graduate courses).

 

:iagree:

[VeritasMama]

I went through teacher training for Everyday Math as a student teacher, I taught it to first graders.

 

I agree that it is a great program for advanced/gifted and bright students, it is a train wreck for everyone else. I had a great cooperating teacher, and I was able to gain insights from the teacher training that helped me fill in the gaps. You really need to implement all the different activities and supplemental lessons for ED to work well, and that means you are doing math for 1 1/2 hours a day. That is meant to be seperated into different periods throughout the day, not all in one time block of course.

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That is simply not practical for a classroom setting, and so many teachers simply ditch everything but the workbooks, with terrible results. Many elementary teachers are not proficient themselves in the "why" of math, and so they are at a loss with how to help struggling students with the conceptual side of things.

 

It is spiraling, which my own particular learning style loves, but in the first few grades you really need to cement your number sense and math facts through repetition and mastery. We added in plenty of extra drill and review ourselves, but if a teacher didn't do this it would lead to plenty of problems down the road.

 

In short, this is a great program if you have unlimited time to prep for math instruction and are highly proficient in math yourself, which is why it fails in so many classrooms.

 

We use Singapore Math.

[Guest helixyuri]

I think in the long run spaced repetition systems are the only way to end the math battles. The main issue is what are we going to spend the limited amount of time on repetition for fact recall or understanding? I believe that with space repetition systems the fact recall can be handled at home and the conceptual at school.

 

If any of you uses Anki, there is an acrostic memory system I specifically created to replace many of the flaws of traditional memorization. The shared decks I created are called Algebra acrostics/Calculus acrostics/Geometry acrostics/Trigonometry acrostics.

[misty.warden]

I've been reading some opinions on the horrors of the "new new math" having taken over math education in the US - producing children who can philosophize on math but can't actually DO math. But when I find out what concepts the new new math include, it sounds just like what we're learning in Singapore, MM, Beast, and my beloved Miquon. Stuff like: when asked "what is 6 times 8?", rather than just producing the answer 48 from rote memorization and drill, children can show you the manipulatives of 6 of 8 and can talk about "6 groups of 8" but have great difficulty producing the final answer quickly, if at all. This concerns me for what I'm using to teach math in our household...Even my own dd6, who is very adept at using cuisenaire rods, has a lot of trouble remembering basic addition facts on a quiz. Seriously, I'm thinking of making the switch to an early edition of Saxon, to avoid the "new new math".

 

What do you think about the way math is taught in our curriculums?

 

So they can say "there are six groups of eight" but the words for the numbers mean nothing unless they count them all out? Sounds like an issue with getting them past thinking in terms of items, which I can see being a problem when variables get introduced. I've heard many people of all ages freak out "what do you MEAN it can be any number?" and I don't remember learning that, so I don't know how to explain it, I'm there with you in the fear that it'll impact my teaching if ds doesn't pick it up intuitively like I seemed to.

 

Is this the issue in some states or is this a common problem? I thought you needed to take a significant number of upper math classes to get credentials in CA to teach math. This is scary.

 

I'd say so, though less so with math teachers in my experience. I did have an English teacher once who had a degree in math and no credentials in English.

 

 

I hope I'm not frantically screaming...or am I? Because honestly, it does freak me out when I can't figure out a problem from my son's year 3 MEP problem book,...or understand the bar models from his Singapore 3 book...not every problem, but occasionally they do pop up. Is it that I have a subpar understanding of math (which I don't mind admitting), or are these problems HARD?

 

:grouphug: I hear more defeat than screams, and math is one of those subjects that tends to be ruined in a child's mind for life if they don't have a good first experience or have a less than perfect teacher (or so the mysterious "they" say.) I have no idea what bar models are, couldn't do averages until 7th grade or decimal multiplication and division, conversion from fractions to decimals and back, or figure out what the blazes Cuisenaire rods were until about 4 months ago, and I still feel like I could do a better job than most ps teachers. If it's hard, you're able to learn and work with him rather than pushing forward to teach the test, if you don't understand there's always tutoring and other books.

[Dana]

So they can say "there are six groups of eight" but the words for the numbers mean nothing unless they count them all out? Sounds like an issue with getting them past thinking in terms of items, which I can see being a problem when variables get introduced. I've heard many people of all ages freak out "what do you MEAN it can be any number?" and I don't remember learning that, so I don't know how to explain it, I'm there with you in the fear that it'll impact my teaching if ds doesn't pick it up intuitively like I seemed to.

 

 

This is where I'm just in awe at how the Singapore bar method leads so beautifully into variables and algebraic thinking.

I require my son to show work with bar models on some of the problems that he's able to just "see" the answer to... not all... but at least one or two of the "easy" ones in a set. When he's stuck on a problem, I suggest he do a bar model.

 

I don't think you see where they're going with the bar models in the early books. I didn't.

But by book 4 and 5... wow!! Major payoff!

 

 

For introducing variables, if you're talking about just evaluating an expression, come up with a relationship... "You can have 3 Skittles for every year you've lived. How many do you get? How many do I get? Is there any way we can write this with math?"

You can start with boxes (I say students have been working with variables when they'd fill in the box in elementary school: 5 + ____ = 12 )

So here, we'd have 3 * (Skittles).

Mathematicians are lazy, so we don't want to write so much... we'll just say 3s.

Build from there :)

 

Algebra tiles are also really cool.

Tiles

Book on using them (I've seen this one, don't know how good it is, but look for others & see what helps).

The tiles are great for seeing the difference between x and x^2 which was a concept that messed with me when I first saw it.