Reply to Curriculum 2.0 Math and 4th and 5th graders

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The math that came home tonight for my 3rd grade student was total craziness.  Absolutely was.  There was no textbook for me to refer to nor did it connect to anything that came home prior.  Obviously it was an extension (hard as crap) but it wasn't relevant for my son because it did not build upon anything he had been taught prior.

Basically, it was a worksheet that showed two additional ways of doing long subtraction.  My son learned long subtraction 2 years ago and kept wanting to use that method but it wasn't what was demonstrated on the top of the worksheet.  It wanted him to estimate subtraction, add in the difference of what you estimated, then add with estimating and putting in the difference and checking the answers which should be the same.  Sheer craziness.  This for a 3rd grader.

My son finally, after several tries could do the problems independently but then asked the logical question, why would anyone do math this way?  Why not just solve the subtraction problem using long subtraction techniques.  I'm thinking yep, my son is right.  The old way was good enough for thousands of years.  Why is MCPS trying to re-write math?[/quote]

I'm not sure what "estimating subtraction" means here, but long subtraction, while a valuable and necessary math skill, is not what adults do in their heads.  Long subtraction is good for, say, subtracting two four-digit numbers if you have a pencil and paper handy -- but then you'll also have your smart phone with calculator and will probably just do it that way.  When you don't have pencil and paper, you probably can't keep track of all the carrying too well and so you'll resort to making it into a mental calculation of two differences and then adding.  It sounds like your son was being taught to do this, and it seems like a valid real-world skill. Hooray, 2.0!
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