2.0 1st grade curriculum: Carbon Dioxide? Yes! Telling time? No!

[Anonymous]

Just to be clear, since this thread mentions 1st grade, currently in MCPS there are no math textbooks until Pre-Calculus. Until then it's nothing but packets of worksheets generated in house.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids started in a MPCS pilot program of 4 schools that used Singapore Math (College Gardens - years ago). Unfortunately their test scores were not as good as similar schools using the standard MCPS curriculum and the training and supplies were

different and costly to maintain. It was dropped.

I have heard of this before and always wondered why this was the case. Mcps obviously didn't completely give up, because 2.0 is sort of the poor men's Singapore Math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Tracking is done in many places all over the country. Sorry, it does not deny anyone an education. Many non-english speakers of asian decent are in the highest tracked classes. No one is segregating here so go away with your nonsense. All kids that go to public school get an education.

Yes, it does. This is an established fact. You are saying that something that is a fact is not a fact.

Also a fact: segregation.

And yes, all kids who go to public school get an education, insofar as they are going to school. But some get a good education, some get a bad education, and some get a very bad education.

If tracking is segregation than so is ability groups. So is getting pulled out for ESOL. Lady, you are nuts.

+1

She is trying to prove her opinion as fact. Kids are currently put in groups based on levels. If anything, the kids struggling need more than the quick 10 minute lesson.

There is an important distinction between within-class ability grouping with frequent reassessment, on the one hand, and tracking, on the other. A lot of people who were in the top track are nostalgic for the days of tracking.

What we have now in MCPS is within-class ability grouping, and DCUM purely hates it.

I have one kid in the lower track and I absolutely hate hime being in a class with kids mostly smarter than him He struggles daily and I would love for him to be with peers at his level. Maybe lower ratios and more direct teaching would help these kids. Right now he blows off worksheets because he is embarrassed. And because he can. No one is watching him or helping him. Then he gets labeled as a problem child. Very frustrating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just to be clear, since this thread mentions 1st grade, currently in MCPS there are no math textbooks until Pre-Calculus. Until then it's nothing but packets of worksheets generated in house.

You can not be serious? No Algebra or Geometry textbooks?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just to be clear, since this thread mentions 1st grade, currently in MCPS there are no math textbooks until Pre-Calculus. Until then it's nothing but packets of worksheets generated in house.

You can not be serious? No Algebra or Geometry textbooks?

I have one in geometry and one in algebra iii...both have books.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just to be clear, since this thread mentions 1st grade, currently in MCPS there are no math textbooks until Pre-Calculus. Until then it's nothing but packets of worksheets generated in house.

You can not be serious? No Algebra or Geometry textbooks?

I have one in geometry and one in algebra iii...both have books.

What school?

I have one in Alg II who was in Geom last year and has never had a math book.

Some classrooms still have the old textbooks but they are not the class text. Students would have to request a book be issued and are not encouraged to do this. MCPS says no good CC aligned books are available yet, so they are in a holding pattern for now but kind of looks like both mine will be educated entirely within this period and will hardly see a math text.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:[

I'm an engineer, I've had more math than most math teachers, I've done 3D calculus long hand before computers. I've never had a bad math textbook in my life. It's pretty damn simple, there is an explanation, some sample problems and exercises. Answers to the evens or odds, usually in the back of the book. Front and back of the books, have charts and tables of properties, which you learn to reference to be able to apply to solve problems.

Teacher explains the lesson, if the explanation does not stick you ask him/her the next day, come in before or after school to get help. Does that sound familiar? Haven't seen an MCPS teacher yet that offers help outside of class time, but that may change as my children get older. I can't tell you how many times I have heard "my child doesn't remember how the teacher told them to do x, but when I tell my kid they tell me I'm not doing it the way the teacher did." All because there is no reference.

What I have seen is chaotic classrooms with unsure kids working in groups by themselves. I've seen them draw sticks and dots for years to the point they are so bored they can do it blindfolded. Maybe this remedial work helps those who can't grasp math or do not have the home life that supports learning, but the rest of the children also matter. It's gotten so the pendulum has slid all the way to remedial without consideration of the needs of the average or above average learner.

Meanwhile we are facing an increase in property tax, to support a 2 Billion (that is Billion with a B) plus school budget for a school system that can't buy a book or implement a curriculum. How much of that property tax increase will benefit my kids? None, it's going to salary increases and to prepare for the onslaught of non english speaking kids that will overwhelm our school system.

Okay so drawing 3 rows of 5 dots can be beneficial for understanding the concept of 3 x 5 = 15. But year after year, my kids do busy work without learning the core facts.

I refuse to buy books any more, and will only go to the library. My kids are so bored with school, they just read the whole day. The only feedback I get from teachers is that my kids are reading too much and not paying attention, while the cruise through with A's and the younger ones with P's. This system is killing their love of learning.

Yes, it's a very common belief that if you know how to learn math, then you know how to teach math. But it's an incorrect belief.

(It's also a very common belief, on DCUM, that the entire purpose of MCPS is to keep my sweet, bright Larlo dumb while throwing money down a hole at undeserving future gang members only there for the free baby-sitting.)

[Anonymous]

I love everyone pushing the common core math as the right way to teach math. So far test scores across the board have gone down and now they are taking away final exams and rounding up grades. How are we going to see if this way is the right way? You have to be a complete idiot to get anything less than a C in any class in MCPS.

And personally there are many hard working professionals that learned math the old way for decades and did just great. Dumbing down and over-explaining numbers just slows the process. It can help a few struggling kids but the only reason it appears to be working in a classroom setting is because parents supplement the snail crawl curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[

I'm an engineer, I've had more math than most math teachers, I've done 3D calculus long hand before computers. I've never had a bad math textbook in my life. It's pretty damn simple, there is an explanation, some sample problems and exercises. Answers to the evens or odds, usually in the back of the book. Front and back of the books, have charts and tables of properties, which you learn to reference to be able to apply to solve problems.

Teacher explains the lesson, if the explanation does not stick you ask him/her the next day, come in before or after school to get help. Does that sound familiar? Haven't seen an MCPS teacher yet that offers help outside of class time, but that may change as my children get older. I can't tell you how many times I have heard "my child doesn't remember how the teacher told them to do x, but when I tell my kid they tell me I'm not doing it the way the teacher did." All because there is no reference.

What I have seen is chaotic classrooms with unsure kids working in groups by themselves. I've seen them draw sticks and dots for years to the point they are so bored they can do it blindfolded. Maybe this remedial work helps those who can't grasp math or do not have the home life that supports learning, but the rest of the children also matter. It's gotten so the pendulum has slid all the way to remedial without consideration of the needs of the average or above average learner.

Meanwhile we are facing an increase in property tax, to support a 2 Billion (that is Billion with a B) plus school budget for a school system that can't buy a book or implement a curriculum. How much of that property tax increase will benefit my kids? None, it's going to salary increases and to prepare for the onslaught of non english speaking kids that will overwhelm our school system.

Okay so drawing 3 rows of 5 dots can be beneficial for understanding the concept of 3 x 5 = 15. But year after year, my kids do busy work without learning the core facts.

I refuse to buy books any more, and will only go to the library. My kids are so bored with school, they just read the whole day. The only feedback I get from teachers is that my kids are reading too much and not paying attention, while the cruise through with A's and the younger ones with P's. This system is killing their love of learning.

Yes, it's a very common belief that if you know how to learn math, then you know how to teach math. But it's an incorrect belief.

(It's also a very common belief, on DCUM, that the entire purpose of MCPS is to keep my sweet, bright Larlo dumb while throwing money down a hole at undeserving future gang members only there for the free baby-sitting.)

Not the PP your responding to.
Sure some people who are good at learning math are not good teachers. But guess what, people who are bad at learning math are always bad teachers. So, sorry, you can't just dismiss everyone who knows something about math as a charlatan. The fact is many people learned math from text books and whether that was to overcome a poor teacher or just to work at their own pace it is a very important method of learning. Math is the epitome of organization, it lends itself to careful presentation in a text. I'm with PP, I haven't seen bad math books, certainly not one that is as riddled with errors as the IM packets my DC is currently receiving.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand what's abnormal or age-inappropriate about learning about carbon dioxide and the carbon footprint. (And I know that first-graders learned about the environment under the previous curriculum.)

It makes a lot of sense to me to wait to teach about time on an analog clock until the children have learned about fractions. And I don't see the detriment, since everybody uses digital clocks these days anyway.

Also, a lot of the stuff you complain about is school policy, not the curriculum.

(Probably under the previous curriculum, you would have been one of the people complaining about math acceleration. MCPS can't do anything right.)

My daughter is in Pre-Calc as a 9th grader. I definitely wasn't complaining about acceleration. Kids NEED acceleration. They don't need to be dumbed down and now dumbed down by easier grades too. My youngest daughter has no chance to even take this same route and she seems to be even brighter. Instead she is learning math facts up to 12 right now, which most preschools teach when kids are 4.

You can not rationalize no need for acceleration but teaching 6yr olds about carbon dioxide is a good thing.

This is school policy, not MCPS. My first grader is reading at a mid-third grade level and is in a reading group of similar kids. She's not one of the advanced ones in math, but is still learning math like 86-10 or 136+12. I'm sure that's not up to your standard of pre-calc in 4th grade or whatever, but it's beyond what I did in first grade and I ended up at Harvard so I guess it didn't damage me too badly.

[Anonymous]

^but there are many more adult Americans who are not very good at math than those who are.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazine/why-do-americans-stink-at-math.html?_r=0

"A 2012 study comparing 16-to-65-year-olds in 20 countries found that Americans rank in the bottom five in numeracy. On a scale of 1 to 5, 29 percent of them scored at Level 1 or below, meaning they could do basic arithmetic but not computations requiring two or more steps"

And even if they try to implement a better way of teaching math, you get this:

"Teachers primarily learn to teach by recalling their memories of having been taught, about 13,000 hours of instruction during a typical childhood — a problem since their instruction wasn’t very good."

"Official math-reform training did not help, either. Sometimes trainers offered patently bad information — failing to clarify, for example, that even though teachers were to elicit wrong answers from students, they still needed, eventually, to get to correct ones. Textbooks, too, barely changed, despite publishers’ claims to the contrary."

And no training

"With the Common Core, teachers are once more being asked to unlearn an old approach and learn an entirely new one, essentially on their own. Training is still weak and infrequent, and principals — who are no more skilled at math than their teachers — remain unprepared to offer support. Textbooks, once again, have received only surface adjustments, despite the shiny Common Core labels that decorate their covers. “To have a vendor say their product is Common Core is close to meaningless,” says Phil Daro, an author of the math standards."

Here's the result

"But if a teacher doesn’t use the dots to illustrate bigger ideas, they become just another meaningless exercise. Instead of memorizing familiar steps, students now practice even stranger rituals, like drawing dots only to count them or breaking simple addition problems into complicated forms (62+26, for example, must become 60+2+20+6) without understanding why. This can make for even poorer math students."

All this sound familiar?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[

I'm an engineer, I've had more math than most math teachers, I've done 3D calculus long hand before computers. I've never had a bad math textbook in my life. It's pretty damn simple, there is an explanation, some sample problems and exercises. Answers to the evens or odds, usually in the back of the book. Front and back of the books, have charts and tables of properties, which you learn to reference to be able to apply to solve problems.

Teacher explains the lesson, if the explanation does not stick you ask him/her the next day, come in before or after school to get help. Does that sound familiar? Haven't seen an MCPS teacher yet that offers help outside of class time, but that may change as my children get older. I can't tell you how many times I have heard "my child doesn't remember how the teacher told them to do x, but when I tell my kid they tell me I'm not doing it the way the teacher did." All because there is no reference.

What I have seen is chaotic classrooms with unsure kids working in groups by themselves. I've seen them draw sticks and dots for years to the point they are so bored they can do it blindfolded. Maybe this remedial work helps those who can't grasp math or do not have the home life that supports learning, but the rest of the children also matter. It's gotten so the pendulum has slid all the way to remedial without consideration of the needs of the average or above average learner.

Meanwhile we are facing an increase in property tax, to support a 2 Billion (that is Billion with a B) plus school budget for a school system that can't buy a book or implement a curriculum. How much of that property tax increase will benefit my kids? None, it's going to salary increases and to prepare for the onslaught of non english speaking kids that will overwhelm our school system.

Okay so drawing 3 rows of 5 dots can be beneficial for understanding the concept of 3 x 5 = 15. But year after year, my kids do busy work without learning the core facts.

I refuse to buy books any more, and will only go to the library. My kids are so bored with school, they just read the whole day. The only feedback I get from teachers is that my kids are reading too much and not paying attention, while the cruise through with A's and the younger ones with P's. This system is killing their love of learning.

Yes, it's a very common belief that if you know how to learn math, then you know how to teach math. But it's an incorrect belief.

(It's also a very common belief, on DCUM, that the entire purpose of MCPS is to keep my sweet, bright Larlo dumb while throwing money down a hole at undeserving future gang members only there for the free baby-sitting.)

You can peddle your racist bull$hit somewhere else. The lack of curriculum hurts all kids. A textbook would be an incredibly helpful tool for an immigrant family to have as a reference.

Just because I advocate for a real curriculum and textbooks does not mean that I think immigrant children are future gang members. That is a disgusting accusation. I can guarantee that I have done way more voluntary tutoring for at risk children than.you have. I have found the children whose parents engage and care, will work their way out of poverty. It doesn't matter of they are working three jobs they make time for their kids and stay on top of them.

The ones whose parents don't care, stop coming because they don't want to be bothered with the followup or extra time it takes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[

I'm an engineer, I've had more math than most math teachers, I've done 3D calculus long hand before computers. I've never had a bad math textbook in my life. It's pretty damn simple, there is an explanation, some sample problems and exercises. Answers to the evens or odds, usually in the back of the book. Front and back of the books, have charts and tables of properties, which you learn to reference to be able to apply to solve problems.

Teacher explains the lesson, if the explanation does not stick you ask him/her the next day, come in before or after school to get help. Does that sound familiar? Haven't seen an MCPS teacher yet that offers help outside of class time, but that may change as my children get older. I can't tell you how many times I have heard "my child doesn't remember how the teacher told them to do x, but when I tell my kid they tell me I'm not doing it the way the teacher did." All because there is no reference.

What I have seen is chaotic classrooms with unsure kids working in groups by themselves. I've seen them draw sticks and dots for years to the point they are so bored they can do it blindfolded. Maybe this remedial work helps those who can't grasp math or do not have the home life that supports learning, but the rest of the children also matter. It's gotten so the pendulum has slid all the way to remedial without consideration of the needs of the average or above average learner.

Meanwhile we are facing an increase in property tax, to support a 2 Billion (that is Billion with a B) plus school budget for a school system that can't buy a book or implement a curriculum. How much of that property tax increase will benefit my kids? None, it's going to salary increases and to prepare for the onslaught of non english speaking kids that will overwhelm our school system.

Okay so drawing 3 rows of 5 dots can be beneficial for understanding the concept of 3 x 5 = 15. But year after year, my kids do busy work without learning the core facts.

I refuse to buy books any more, and will only go to the library. My kids are so bored with school, they just read the whole day. The only feedback I get from teachers is that my kids are reading too much and not paying attention, while the cruise through with A's and the younger ones with P's. This system is killing their love of learning.

Yes, it's a very common belief that if you know how to learn math, then you know how to teach math. But it's an incorrect belief.

(It's also a very common belief, on DCUM, that the entire purpose of MCPS is to keep my sweet, bright Larlo dumb while throwing money down a hole at undeserving future gang members only there for the free baby-sitting.)

You can peddle your racist bull$hit somewhere else. The lack of curriculum hurts all kids. A textbook would be an incredibly helpful tool for an immigrant family to have as a reference.

Just because I advocate for a real curriculum and textbooks does not mean that I think immigrant children are future gang members. That is a disgusting accusation. I can guarantee that I have done way more voluntary tutoring for at risk children than.you have. I have found the children whose parents engage and care, will work their way out of poverty. It doesn't matter of they are working three jobs they make time for their kids and stay on top of them.

The ones whose parents don't care, stop coming because they don't want to be bothered with the followup or extra time it takes.

PP, I agree with you 100%. Both of your posts are spot on.

The math that they are currently doing in early ES is complete crap. Doesn't benefit any of the kids - low/high or middle performers. A textbook would be a HUGE improvement. My kid brings home homework packets asking her to show her work using a number line, or whatever, but unless she remembers it from class, we can't help her. There have been no explanations sent home. Sure, I can email the teacher, or Google it, but a textbook would provide an explanation and have it there for my kid to reference. We buy the Spectrum workbooks solely for this reason, in Language Arts. Concrete definitions of 'adverb/adjective/noun/pronoun/reflexive pronoun', etc that my kid can look back to if she forgets.

And, I'm a child of immigrants. My parents barely spoke English, so I agree that textbooks can be a huge help for parents who are immigrants.

Also, the in-class groupings is a HUGE waste of time. I volunteer tons and see how it works. The kids who know what is going on breeze through the worksheets and then read. Kids who are struggling assume they're stupid and blow them off. Often times the worksheets never get graded anyway, so the kids who need help with them, don't really get the direct instruction they should be getting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I have one kid in the lower track and I absolutely hate hime being in a class with kids mostly smarter than him He struggles daily and I would love for him to be with peers at his level. Maybe lower ratios and more direct teaching would help these kids. Right now he blows off worksheets because he is embarrassed. And because he can. No one is watching him or helping him. Then he gets labeled as a problem child. Very frustrating.

My DD is in first grade, and I see this weekly when I volunteer. If I'm there, I can sit with the kids who are having difficulty and walk them through what they should be doing. Otherwise, the kids who don't get what's going on just blow them off and learn that they're stupid (which I adamantly do NOT believe, I just hear the kids say 'Larla is good at math, I'm not'). More direct instruction would be better for ALL the kids.

I agree with lower ratios of the kids who need to catch up. Putting them with the kids who are more advanced isn't helping. Some people on here have argued that the kids who are above level are helping the kids who need to catch up, but I don't see this happen. The kids who speed through the worksheets, just go to the reading corner and read or take extra bathroom breaks, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MCPS sucks!! It's getting worse every year. Very disappointing.

If you think MCPS then you are truly misinformed. There are several other counties in Maryland that are much worse. One of them is located directly under Montgomery County