The AJC has posted about a decision to change from the state's math curriculum (heavy on investigation) to one more firmly based in a teacher centered format of explaining the process.
Math Stories makes the point that most of us who teach math always did well at it and are facing a majority of students who don't "get it".
There is a balance and I have always tried to find that balance. Oddly, I was chased away by a principal who couldn't see what I was telling him: the new system (investigation) assumes things about the students which discourages those who don't do well from succeeding. With a basis in the math - they did well. My accelerated class shined at it. My lower level class needed more help than the investigation allowed. And it is probably me.
Where I was allowed to teach by example, "old fashioned", give the foundation, I could go into the beauty of math and have them appreciate it.
Now in high school, I often have to spend a large portion of the first semester just getting them to see that they CAN do it.
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2 comments:
I agree with you on this post Ricochet. I think the important thing is that teachers are allowed the freedom to design instruction to best meet the needs of their students. To be locked into one single ideology is ridiculuous. I think you've just given me an idea for my next post!
I teach and have children in the Cambridge Public Schools. They used to do "Investigations", and now are fully immersed in "TERC" until high school. It teaches them number sense instead of memorizing, and it lays the foundations for algebra.
At first it seemed to skip some fundamentals (like memorizing multiplication tables), but they've revised as they've seen their mistakes.
The good thing is that here, we have school choice, so some students move around too much. This consistency keeps the kids from falling behind.
The bad thing is that some kids get it quickly, and are forced to wait for the other ones to figure out. Lower performing kids sometimes rely on strategies that take too long. And, as you say, whatever method gets incorporated into a school system, teachers lose some power to address the needs of the students in their classrooms.
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