Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Eureka way is dumb imo. My dad who taught college math for over 40 years (still teaching!) asked why are they teaching simple arithmetic this way?

People who teach college math are the LAST people to consult about teaching math to elementary-school students imo.

Or, the FIRST because they see all the pitfalls that lead to math deficiency down the line!

College math professors might be able to say that people are having problems with college math, but they will not be able to explain why, because they don't understand how to teach math effectively to general people, and especially not elementary-school math.

Anecdotally, some of the math professors I had in college were worse at teaching math than my high school math teacher who was primarily the girls' softball coach.

Anecdotally, the best math teachers I ever had were in college.

Perhaps the only thing thing we can safely conclude from our respective anecdotes is that personal anecdotes are an unreliable basis on which to form generalizations.

I do believe that subject matter experts need to be involved in the development and review of a subject’s curriculum. The curriculum generated by MCPS seems to be developed by staff that are supposedly pedagogical experts rather than subject matter experts, and so there is less emphasis on content, and less understanding in how it fits together and builds on itself to form the necessary foundation for higher levels.

Actually, I highly recommend the book Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics by Liping Ma. To your point, she’s a schoolteacher, not a college professor, who compares the effectiveness of math instruction in China and the US. Her book would support your position that it doesn’t take a professor to effectively teach math, but it does take someone with a deep (not necessarily advanced) understanding of the subject and a focus on the subject in the curriculum.

I'm curious which instruction she finds more effective.

The secret to math in China is to spend a lot more time on it. Of course that part would help everywhere.
But pedagogically, People who spend time teaching in both China and US (and these are Chinese people) say that Chinese style cram practice stunts kids ability to solve novel problems.

There is a reason foreign smart people come to USA for post-secondary education much much more than the other direction.

I think the discussion of the "facts"/quick way vs. concept had to do with the chosen elementary curriculum, Eureka, which emphasizes concept via multiple methodologies. Not all parents/guardians/caregivers learned all of the different approaches, so it can be difficult to support at home without a textbook or teaching guide, which the parent tip sheets decidedly are not (the GreatMinds link currently has no content, while the NY Engage link requires a NY State Microsoft login).

MCPS has chosen this curriculum, and with good reasoning; the curriculum office folks, to my experience, have both subject matter and pedagogical expertise. The multi-faceted understanding should serve students well as they progress, and appropriate, if not super-robust, enrichments/accelerations are available to help meet the needs of kids who "get it" quickly.

What MCPS needs to do is:

1) ensure better identification of, and fidelity to, need for enrichment/acceleration,

2) ensure teacher support to allow consistent application/management of the enrichment differentiation, especially in classrooms with students of highly heterogeneous capability, and

3) make teaching materials available to families to allow them to provide support, as NY has.

Otherwise, they are not only limiting the potential of the curriculum, but exacerbating the gap between haves (more homogeneous-capability classrooms, more routine access to costly outside enrichment employed when family-guided support is difficult) and have-nots.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Eureka way is dumb imo. My dad who taught college math for over 40 years (still teaching!) asked why are they teaching simple arithmetic this way?

People who teach college math are the LAST people to consult about teaching math to elementary-school students imo.

Or, the FIRST because they see all the pitfalls that lead to math deficiency down the line!

College math professors might be able to say that people are having problems with college math, but they will not be able to explain why, because they don't understand how to teach math effectively to general people, and especially not elementary-school math.

Anecdotally, some of the math professors I had in college were worse at teaching math than my high school math teacher who was primarily the girls' softball coach.

Anecdotally, the best math teachers I ever had were in college.

Perhaps the only thing thing we can safely conclude from our respective anecdotes is that personal anecdotes are an unreliable basis on which to form generalizations.

I do believe that subject matter experts need to be involved in the development and review of a subject’s curriculum. The curriculum generated by MCPS seems to be developed by staff that are supposedly pedagogical experts rather than subject matter experts, and so there is less emphasis on content, and less understanding in how it fits together and builds on itself to form the necessary foundation for higher levels.

Actually, I highly recommend the book Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics by Liping Ma. To your point, she’s a schoolteacher, not a college professor, who compares the effectiveness of math instruction in China and the US. Her book would support your position that it doesn’t take a professor to effectively teach math, but it does take someone with a deep (not necessarily advanced) understanding of the subject and a focus on the subject in the curriculum.

PP you're responding to, and I also had two outstanding math teachers in higher education - one a full professor with tenure, the other an adjunct so maybe that doesn't count. However, I think the professor was an outstanding teacher DESPITE being a professor, not BECAUSE OF being a professor. Yes, you need to understand the subject matter. But you also need to know how to teach the subject matter. We all know plenty of people who are technical whizzes (in academics, sports, music, whatever) who can't teach.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Eureka way is dumb imo. My dad who taught college math for over 40 years (still teaching!) asked why are they teaching simple arithmetic this way?

People who teach college math are the LAST people to consult about teaching math to elementary-school students imo.

Kids need to learn the basics like math facts. We had to teach them at home. The strategies are worthless come Algebra.

On the contrary. If all you do is memorize math facts and "these are the steps to solve the problem," then you will be in trouble when you get to algebra, and the more advanced the math gets, the more in trouble you will be.

PP didn’t say that ALL (as in the only thing) kids need to do is to memorize math facts. They said that basic math facts are something kids need to learn (without excluding learning other things).

I think that memorizing basic math facts (along with learning general concepts) is important because it frees up processing power to focus on the concept. This is especially important as the concepts become more complex (like algebra). Moreover, knowing basic facts helps develop number sense. It makes it easier to consider whether an answer seems reasonable.

I don't think anybody disagrees that kids need to memorize math facts (i.e., addition/subtraction/multiplication/division for 0-9).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Eureka way is dumb imo. My dad who taught college math for over 40 years (still teaching!) asked why are they teaching simple arithmetic this way?

People who teach college math are the LAST people to consult about teaching math to elementary-school students imo.

Or, the FIRST because they see all the pitfalls that lead to math deficiency down the line!

College math professors might be able to say that people are having problems with college math, but they will not be able to explain why, because they don't understand how to teach math effectively to general people, and especially not elementary-school math.

Anecdotally, some of the math professors I had in college were worse at teaching math than my high school math teacher who was primarily the girls' softball coach.

Anecdotally, the best math teachers I ever had were in college.

Perhaps the only thing thing we can safely conclude from our respective anecdotes is that personal anecdotes are an unreliable basis on which to form generalizations.

I do believe that subject matter experts need to be involved in the development and review of a subject’s curriculum. The curriculum generated by MCPS seems to be developed by staff that are supposedly pedagogical experts rather than subject matter experts, and so there is less emphasis on content, and less understanding in how it fits together and builds on itself to form the necessary foundation for higher levels.

Actually, I highly recommend the book Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics by Liping Ma. To your point, she’s a schoolteacher, not a college professor, who compares the effectiveness of math instruction in China and the US. Her book would support your position that it doesn’t take a professor to effectively teach math, but it does take someone with a deep (not necessarily advanced) understanding of the subject and a focus on the subject in the curriculum.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Eureka way is dumb imo. My dad who taught college math for over 40 years (still teaching!) asked why are they teaching simple arithmetic this way?

People who teach college math are the LAST people to consult about teaching math to elementary-school students imo.

Kids need to learn the basics like math facts. We had to teach them at home. The strategies are worthless come Algebra.

On the contrary. If all you do is memorize math facts and "these are the steps to solve the problem," then you will be in trouble when you get to algebra, and the more advanced the math gets, the more in trouble you will be.

PP didn’t say that ALL (as in the only thing) kids need to do is to memorize math facts. They said that basic math facts are something kids need to learn (without excluding learning other things).

I think that memorizing basic math facts (along with learning general concepts) is important because it frees up processing power to focus on the concept. This is especially important as the concepts become more complex (like algebra). Moreover, knowing basic facts helps develop number sense. It makes it easier to consider whether an answer seems reasonable.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Eureka way is dumb imo. My dad who taught college math for over 40 years (still teaching!) asked why are they teaching simple arithmetic this way?

People who teach college math are the LAST people to consult about teaching math to elementary-school students imo.

Or, the FIRST because they see all the pitfalls that lead to math deficiency down the line!

College math professors might be able to say that people are having problems with college math, but they will not be able to explain why, because they don't understand how to teach math effectively to general people, and especially not elementary-school math.

Anecdotally, some of the math professors I had in college were worse at teaching math than my high school math teacher who was primarily the girls' softball coach.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Eureka way is dumb imo. My dad who taught college math for over 40 years (still teaching!) asked why are they teaching simple arithmetic this way?

People who teach college math are the LAST people to consult about teaching math to elementary-school students imo.

Kids need to learn the basics like math facts. We had to teach them at home. The strategies are worthless come Algebra.

On the contrary. If all you do is memorize math facts and "these are the steps to solve the problem," then you will be in trouble when you get to algebra, and the more advanced the math gets, the more in trouble you will be.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, basic math understanding means that you should be able to recall your way of getting the right answer, then work backwards from that to figure out the teacher's way, and then explain the teacher's way to your kid (and also your way, because the more they understand that there are different ways of getting to the answer, the better it is for logical reasoning).

At least, this is what I've always done. My kids are older teens now, and went the advanced math track route.

-research scientist.

“Research scientist” is quickly becoming a famous DCUM poster.

Really? NIH, Children's Hospital, various local universities, the biotech corridor... all right there, PP. There are several of us.

There are lots of people who are research scientists. I don't think there are a lot of people who post on DCUM and sign their posts "-research scientist."

"-research scientist" was an especially prolific poster during covid, as I recall.

Dime a dozen.
-unimpressed poster

Anonymous wrote:Tape chart!

Tape diagram 😉

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree with Khan Academy lessons, either direct from the site or just looking up the video portions on youtube.

Patent tip sheets are one of the areas in which I find Eureka weak. They don't explain well enough the concepts being taught, and Eureka, as noted, teaches multiple conceptual approaches. You can use them to review something with your child if they've learned it already (or if you are familiar with the particular approach), but not so much to teach them that approach.

There's more out there than the tip sheets that Eureka offers by default, but that isn't made available by MCPS. We used to be able to go to the NY state Engage site to get this (about as close to a textbook as we're allowed these days), but they have since restricted access to families of NY students. So the Khan Academy route seems to be the best current option.

You can find all of the archived Eureka materials here: https://greatminds.org/eureka-math-basic-files

Looks like the links above aren't working, but these ones are: https://nysed.sharepoint.com/sites/P12EngageNY-Math-EXTA/Shared%20Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx?id=%2Fsites%2FP12EngageNY%2DMath%2DEXTA%2FShared%20Documents%2FMathematics&p=true&ga=1

Make copies while they are still up!

Anonymous wrote:Videos: https://www2.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/math-support/

omg those videos are so awful. I remember MCPS telling kids to watch them at the start of the pandemic (spring semester 2020). If you are going to make your kids watch something, make it Khan. The Eureka ones are absolutely awful.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, basic math understanding means that you should be able to recall your way of getting the right answer, then work backwards from that to figure out the teacher's way, and then explain the teacher's way to your kid (and also your way, because the more they understand that there are different ways of getting to the answer, the better it is for logical reasoning).

At least, this is what I've always done. My kids are older teens now, and went the advanced math track route.

-research scientist.

I think I’m looking at this from the opposite direction. The important thing is to understand the math principle in the lesson. As the Pp indicated, there may be multiple mathematically valid methods to approach a problem. Presumably the school is teaching the method that they think will best teach the student the mathematical concept. However, if the method isn’t making sense to you or your child, teach them the method that does make mathematical sense to you Just make sure to teach them WHY it works (the underlying concept). The teacher can clarify the method in school, but that’s not the goal. Think of it like the teacher giving directions to a destination. The directions will be for what the teacher thinks is the best route, but if there’s a roadblock, you take a detour. But keep in mind, the destination isn’t a correct answer, it’s mathematical understanding.

This doesn’t work in ES. If the teacher asks you to solve the problem using, say, number bonds and the kid solves using the algorithm, then the kid gets zero points and it considered behind. The kid needs to know each strategy, rather than the single strategy we learned.

Khan academy videos are great.

No one gets below 50. No 0s.

Points don't matter in ES.
"Considered behind" isn't bad, it's gets you extra free support.

They have the MAP-M test to chart progress in learning, even if they are bad at completing the bad worksheets

Videos: https://www2.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/math-support/