Reply to Compacted 4/5 math

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[quote=Anonymous][quote]PP - I think most parents would support a math program that teaches skills in-depth and is taught well. What most parents who have experienced this 2.0 model is that it skips around in concepts and thus does not teach the kids core fundamental skills that they can build upon in higher level math.

For example, everyone would agree basic math facts are fundamental skills that all children should know by the end of 3rd grade. Kids should also be able to use these skills to do long addition, long subtraction, long multiplication, and long division. These skills were not soundly supported in 2.0. They were introduce, taught for a unit, then the curriculum changed courses when the majority of the class was ready. With young kids, if these skills are not consistently reinforced, they will learn the skills for the test then with time forget skills they are not continuing to use. That was the main problem with the Everyday Math curriculum and is exacerbated in the 2.0 Curriculum.

I would support any math program that would allow for teachers to spend the first 5 minutes of class having the kids practice their basic math skills. A program like Mad Minutes works great and can be given on many levels. One student can take level A and another level I so they are practicing where they are at the time. Do this everyday with a class for a whole year, you will see a remarkable change in the functional abilities in the student population.[/quote]

I agree with everything except Mad Minutes. DD enjoys this because its fast BUT it really isn't a good tool for solidifying math skills. Its like Kumon where it is more about rote memorization of tables and math facts. I made of point of never having DD memorize the tables but taught her how to do mental calculation. She can multiple, divide, add and subtract very fast and apply it easily to larger numbers now. I would be supportive of program that had the students do things like this everyday for 5 minutes.

The biggest problem in IMO about 2.0 is ironically that it isn't deep. They do skip around and keep repeating things but stop the kids before introducing the interesting concepts or drawing the connections between the unit. They are presenting math in a really backward ass way. DH jokes that an analogous approach with reading would be 'Today we are only going to read words in the book that starts with these 3 letters. We'll skip the other words and come back and read those later. At some point you'll get the gist of the actual story but by then you won't care and hate reading.'

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