They do teach multiple strategies and that is part of the problem. When my son was in 1st grade, his teacher kept a list of strategies to add single digit numbers. I think they ended up w/ 9 or 10 strategies. The poor kids were overwhelmed and a lot of them asked, "Which one am I supposed to use?" I like the acronym KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Maybe a few kids in his class could juggle all of these strategies in their head but most of the kids couldn't. I used to count of my fingers but that wasn't one of their strategies

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. It's just as frustrating for us. Kids are being taught new and innovative strategies in the classroom and then being untaught at home as parents use the old school strategies to "help". Then I spend half my conference time modeling math strategies to clueless parents. Waste of everyone's time. Curriculum and stategies could easily be clearly communicated if there were textbooks! Grrrr!

Let me guess, the school is teaching fuzzy math methods like the ones in Everyday Math and not traditional math algorithms which work efficiently.

Textbooks are like newspapers. They are becoming dinosaurs.

You can buy hard copies of hte online textbooks. If your child has a 504 or IEP, you can have a hard copy of the textbook at home.

For ES, there are plenty of textbooks and accessoriry textlikebooks you can purchase.

How about learnzillion.com or c-k12.org? I think these websites use the Common Core standards in the way that they "teach" the concepts. There is also khanacademy.org as a resource.

I do not understand why a teacher must teach a specific math strategy. I usually show my kids two or three different ways to solve a problem and let them pick the method that works for them, that just makes more (common) sense. Yet another reason to homeschool.

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. It's just as frustrating for us. Kids are being taught new and innovative strategies in the classroom and then being untaught at home as parents use the old school strategies to "help". Then I spend half my conference time modeling math strategies to clueless parents. Waste of everyone's time. Curriculum and stategies could easily be clearly communicated if there were textbooks! Grrrr!

I had no idea kids didnt use textbooks anymore. Wow.

But couldn't teachers post the worksheets etc online? Or are there copyright issues with that?

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. It's just as frustrating for us. Kids are being taught new and innovative strategies in the classroom and then being untaught at home as parents use the old school strategies to "help". Then I spend half my conference time modeling math strategies to clueless parents. Waste of everyone's time. Curriculum and stategies could easily be clearly communicated if there were textbooks! Grrrr!

Teacher here. It's just as frustrating for us. Kids are being taught new and innovative strategies in the classroom and then being untaught at home as parents use the old school strategies to "help". Then I spend half my conference time modeling math strategies to clueless parents. Waste of everyone's time. Curriculum and stategies could easily be clearly communicated if there were textbooks! Grrrr!

Do the kids have a textbook at school? If so ask for one to have at home. If the school won't give you one then buy your own copy off Amazon, it will be very cheap. There might be an online textbook also, find out how to access it.

Anonymous wrote:Dh and I completely agree. Without a textbook in math, we can't see the methods that are being taught, so we are forced to help using the methods we learned, which are never the "right" way.

OMG! Yes! There are too many arguments about the terminology I'm using and what they are being taught now. Same process but different terms and DD gets so upset about it because I'm wrong.

I know!!!! I hate that there are no textbooks and the online ones really don't count!!!!! I'm sick of my kids not getting to see color illustrations/photos of science and social studies stuff. They just have bad black and white xeroxes they tape into a notebook.

Dh and I completely agree. Without a textbook in math, we can't see the methods that are being taught, so we are forced to help using the methods we learned, which are never the "right" way.

What the F are you talking about? My kid is in preschool. What's this with not text BOOKs? I'm confused.

completely agree! I miss textbooks!

One for Spanish, one for math and so on.
Worksheets are frustrating.
Why, oh why no textbooks?