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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]A mom who was born abroad once drew a graph for me about the problem with math in the U.S.

Basically you have time on the x axis and the y axis is knowledge expected. From K-5 the line edges up very slowly. It's not exactly flat but you're not really moving too quickly.  But then in 6th-12th you suddenly have to climb a steep mountain and that's where lots of kids start to fail. In her home country the build up was more like a straight line and steady so kids did not crash once they got to pre-Algebra or Algebra.

[/quote]

I heard similar things from an admin at mcps.  Their explanation was that it's intentional that the slope is almost flat then exponentially climbs during the late middle school years.  It was purposefully by the greats mcps minds because they want to ensure that kids have a solid foundation with the early years.  Therefore, they keep it very slow and drill kids on five different ways to multiply 3x4.  They have to draw it draw it out onto different charts, demonstrating mastery of different methods.  Explain it by words.  As a math major, I feel this is pretty dumb!  My kids are so confuse trying to do the different methods that they actually make more careless mistakes.  Furthermore, they know different ways of solving 3x4 but they get so little practice with fluency as part of the curriculum.  Now, I tell them to tolerate the method, but at home we teach them the overall concept and focus on fluency.[/quote]

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