Reply to Does compact math get your ready for IM?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
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]

I'm in the minority but I think the idea of demonstrating mastery of different methods is very important. I have a very math-y child and doing all those methods was just intuitive. She could flip back and forth between all the different ways to do a problem and explain it very articulately. She did not get confused at all. My second child is also an A student in compacted math and like many was pretty annoyed at having to draw out different types of charts and do problems many different ways when there was one solution that seemed obvious. It's not as easy for her to understand the 4-5 other methods. I do think she's getting a good foundation because of this approach and feel her understanding of math is much deeper than it was for me at her age. However, I do agree that they should practice and drill more. It's not enough to do 3 problems on one topic.[/quote]

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