| Author | |
TryingMyBest
Forum Pro
Joined: Oct 27 2012
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 130
|
| Posted: Aug 02 2013 at 9:03am | IP Logged
|
 |
|
My DD is too little for a formal maths curriculum but I've been a little proactive research. I see that there are all of these different theories for teaching math these days. How are they different? What is Singapore Math, for example? Or Saxon? Do they have different theories behind how they teach math? Is it a matter of figuring out how your child learns and then picking the method that works for the child? Is there a consensus that one is better than the other?
My DH's cousin is an elementary school teacher and she says that they tell parents now not to help their kids with their math homework because it's taught so differently today that the parents will just confuse the kids. I had no idea that there were different ways to teach math.
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
Aagot
Forum All-Star
Joined: Aug 06 2010
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 649
|
| Posted: Aug 02 2013 at 9:49am | IP Logged
|
|
|
I will take a stab at this. To me there are two main camps.
One is "spiral, drill, memorize"- with the thought that if you work 100 problems by the end you will know how to do them. New concepts are introduced and spiralling reviews previously learned info. Worksheets and flash cards are the main instruction tools although some manipulatives are used.This would be Saxon, Abeka etc.
The other is "mastery, aplication, understanding"- learning new info. Usually through hands on techniques, applying this new knowledge in a variety of ways and understanding why math works this way. This would be RightStart, Math-u-see, and Singapore.
There are many others that fall somewhere on the continuum.
My experience has been with Abeka and Right Start. I much prefer the RS method because the child learns to think like a math minded person ( we aren't all wired that way but we can learn to think that way). The child learns the concept through working with the abacus and other manipulatives. He then practices the concepts with card games (this gives a reason to use the new info and practice that doesn't feel like drill and kill). Once the concept is mastered he proves it by completing the worksheet.
Hope that helps.
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
Mrs. A
Forum Newbie
Joined: June 19 2012
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 45
|
| Posted: Aug 02 2013 at 4:04pm | IP Logged
|
|
|
You might be interested in this course from Stanford
I am finding it very interesting. It's not so much a how to as a why to teach math. I don't think it goes into the mastery vs. spiral debate. It's more along the lines of why math matters.
__________________
~ Lisa
Orthodox Christian mom to 5
My blog:Through the Mind to the Heart
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
SallyT
Forum All-Star
Joined: Aug 08 2007
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 2489
|
| Posted: Aug 03 2013 at 9:26am | IP Logged
|
|
|
As a parent who was totally non-mathy in school -- one of my clearest memories is of sitting at my first-grade desk, looking down at a workbook page about money, and thinking, "I'm just not going to do this" -- what it all boils down to in my mind are two possibly paradoxical convictions:
1) that my children will not hate math
2) that my children will actually learn math
If push comes to shove, i would privilege #2 over #1, because while I can't dictate another person's likes and dislikes, I am responsible for what that person learns.
I am also naturally suspicious of anything that turns any area of learning into some kind of secret code that parents presumably are too incompetent to figure out. What that is is professionalism -- the conviction that only a professional is qualified to educate children, and parents' role is just to drop them off and pick them up at the place where their real life takes place. No thanks. Not buying it. People have been learning math for millennia, after all, without all this secret knowledge, and surely even I, who learned virtually no math at the hands of professionals for the better part of fourteen years, can at least learn it *with* my children as they go.
So of course the challenge becomes this: what will best enable my child to learn math, preferably without hating it? I don't, myself, see this as too far afield from learning language arts: there's a "grammar" to math (ie the basic facts, the building blocks of its language), and then the "literature," which is the application of those facts to say exciting things in that language.
I'm not really a classical educator, but I do like the model of the Trivium, with its defined stages: Grammar, Dialectic, Rhetoric. It seems to me that in the early years, it really is appropriate for a child to be learning the "grammar" of math, though that doesn't have to translate into a dry "drill-and-kill" approach. It does mean that regardless of the extent to which a child can understand the "why" of math facts, the end goal is to internalize them, so that eventually the child can move on to more abstract things.
I don't mind being "behind" in terms of state standards in the elementary years, if it means that by sixth grade my kids really are going to have learned to add, subtract, multiply and divide, as well as dealing with things like fractions and measurements -- that they haven't just glanced at a concept yearly and moved on to something else. It's worth it to me to slow down, use hands-on manipulatives (last year we multiplied and divided with . . . um . . . wine corks, of which we have a lot hanging around), whatever it takes for the light bulb to go on.
But then they have not only to "get" the concept, but also to be able to call up specific facts related to it. So we do do some drill and repetition, though often enough it's in the form of computer games. AND I think it's important to keep using that set of facts, not simply to study, "master" them, and then move on. In this regard I really like programs that subscribe to some version of a "spiral" approach.
Starting a math program also doesn't have to mean you've signed onto it for life. Curriculum is a tool, after all, not a master. In the early years I really like Miquon math, which uses manipulatives and very visual things to teach basic concepts. One child of mine moved from that to straight, "drill-type" workbook math, to Saxon (spiral, very drill-oriented) for middle- and high school. With my two younger children I've used Miquon, workbooks, and now a combination of Life of Fred, which teaches math in the context of a story but also includes practice and drill in a spirally way, plus extra drill sheets and other resources.
I want them to like math and be interested in and apply its concepts, to be nimble-minded in the ways that math can teach you to be. On the other hand, I don't want that to mean that they don't actually learn the nuts and bolts that make the whole machine run. At the end of the day, the bottom line is that they *have* to be competent in it. Those are the parameters I have in mind when I assess what we need for a given year.
I hope this little rant has contained some motes of helpfulness. For a non-mathy person, I probably think more about math than about any other area of our homeschool -- not, at this point, because I'm that anxious about it, but because I've discovered that I really like it. Only forty years late . . . :)
Sally
__________________
Castle in the Sea
Abandon Hopefully
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
pmeilaen
Forum All-Star
Joined: Sept 07 2008
Location: New York
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 565
|
| Posted: Aug 03 2013 at 10:14am | IP Logged
|
|
|
Rainbow Resource Catalog has several fantastic math comparison charts. Take a look here.
__________________
Eva
|
| Back to Top |
|
| |
|
|
4Real Forums : Living and Loving Numbers
Topic: Help me understand Math Curriculums
