Thanks local MCPS for destroying your education system with 2.0. My kids parish school thank you. Highest enrollment next year ever.

Double Amen! I could not believe some of the crazy ways they were trying to teach addition. It was extremely confusing, and not to mention that my kid already knew addition (as evidenced by MAP-M scores). Deeper understanding all right....

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Montessori children are all taught to understand what concretely is actually going on with multiplication. I see no problem with the way it was taught.

Yep, I was curious so asked my 2nd grader. He drew 8 groups of 3 ten blocks and said 240. He was in Montessori through K.

Montessori use beads to make blocks of 10s and 100s, and that really makes it easy for the kids to understand what is happening when they do arithmetic operations.

In theory MCPS wants a deeper understanding of concepts for their kids, however - the way they are teaching it is is confusing and hindering the students. I can't understadn why they have to reinvent the wheel each time, why not just adopt the best practices and tools from systems that work>

Amen!

Most teachers were not so great at math when they were at school. At some point, the educational profession decided that teaching skills means not teaching understanding. And they have fixated on explaining in words and nonstandard algotithsms as deeper understanding. Bizarre, really! And sad for our kids.

My child memorized times tables this year in third grade math. Must be your teacher.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Montessori children are all taught to understand what concretely is actually going on with multiplication. I see no problem with the way it was taught.

Yep, I was curious so asked my 2nd grader. He drew 8 groups of 3 ten blocks and said 240. He was in Montessori through K.

Montessori use beads to make blocks of 10s and 100s, and that really makes it easy for the kids to understand what is happening when they do arithmetic operations.

In theory MCPS wants a deeper understanding of concepts for their kids, however - the way they are teaching it is is confusing and hindering the students. I can't understadn why they have to reinvent the wheel each time, why not just adopt the best practices and tools from systems that work>

Op again: the pp is correct RE: times tables - they are not being drilled into kids the way they were when we were young. My kid can figure out the answer, but he can't toss it out quickly. I guess it will be my job to teach this to him this summer.

I think she meant repetition without having to explain in words. Do more real math problems instead of math as English?

Which is it: is the math curriculum supposed to get moving, or is it supposed to do a lot more repetition?

(I'm interpreting "get moving" to mean acceleration, but maybe that's not what the PP meant.)

Anonymous wrote:There is nothing wrong with figuring this out in the beginning. But it needs to get moving. And they need to do a lot more repetition without having to put it in words every single time. After all, math is a language so that we can put these relationships on symbols and equations and not have to use words.

I agree. What happens is that students are taught the real meaning behind multiplication and then they move on. Nobody expects them to memorize their multiplication facts so they go from grade to grade drawing stupid blocks or skip counting in their heads. Parents, here is some advice. Teach your child their multiplication facts at home. Don't assume they will learn them at school b/c they probably won't. Memorization is a lower level thinking skill and school is now all about higher order thinking skills.