Can you tell me about Everyday Mathematics?

I just got a notice that Nadia's new school will be using this program, starting in kindergarten. But when I looked it up, I found that it's controversial, and really a different way of doing math. Apparently many parents are unhappy with it.

Can anyone tell me more? Thanks!

 

Our district uses Everyday Math. I've never heard anything controversial about it, and nothing about it seems strange to me. It seems pretty straightforward.

Our school, however, also uses CSMP. Now THAT's a pain! It involves dots in squares, arrow lines, and all sorts of stuff I'm not used to. It took me a solid three years to get it, so I've had a hard time helping my kids with it.

 

Thanks Amy! Good to know. I was a little worried after I read the wikipedia entry on Everyday Math.

 

Our district also uses everyday math. The only thing I find that is frustrating or doesn't seem to make sense is they will touch on subjects then leave them then come back to them again (hard to explain)like building on them piece by piece but seems like kids may just be starting to grasp the unit then its left for new one. Teachers will say "dont worry if they don't get it at first we will be revisiting it again" The boys seem ok with it, but they are very good at math it just seems harder for kids who don't pick up subjects quickly. They send home study links and home links for kids to do to tie Math into "everyday" life. That part I think is good. Overall our district rates very high academically with state testing so program must be ok.

 

I don't teach math, but I am a teacher and this describes how I teach my subject. I have really found it more effective to spiral through inter-related topics, rather then "cover one" then move on to the next.

 

Our district used it....I personally did not like it. Most teachers found it wonderful for 80% of the kids,but the Special Education students I worked with struggled with the 'skipping around' and too many subjects/ideas/formats on a page. It was really tough for some of my kids and we even used a more traditional Houghton Mifflin Math text for a few students.

I does a lot of practical application and critical thinking, but was tough for kids that get distracted, need a lot of repetition, or took time to master materals.

 

I think this type of math is hated by alot of parents more at the higher grades. They do not teach the standard ways of doing math the way we were taught as children. Hence the parents don't understand at all, and alot of children don't understand, and it takes much much longer.

Here is a video where a lady explains the differences and why so many people do not like this method of math. I agree with her, especially since I have special needs kids who don't need to be learning all this hard, long methods of learning this stuff especially when the format we learned is easy, works every time and is not overly complicated, and allows us to help our children at home when they have trouble.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI

 

My kids used it from first through sixth grade (though in fifth and sixth grade they only used it a little bit, because our school started differentiated instruction and the kids usually "tested out" of the math unit and worked from a different book instead, doing a lot of work in logic in fifth grade, and pre-algebra in sixth).

I really, really dislike this program, though it has a few good points. I will also say that my comments aren't based on the most recent edition that came out last year or the year before, but rather on the edition that came out in 2003 or so.

The good: it claims to have understanding what you're doing as a foundation. That's good (except that there are some truly hypocritical moments, where they do things like have the kids use a method with NO explanation or exploration of why it works). Kids SHOULD understand things like why you carry or borrow when you do computation. Absolutely. The spiraling is also okay, except that it means that the kids are bored senseless if they understood things the first time around. Sometimes something is introduced with the intent of giving the kids a very basic level of understanding, with the intent of revisiting it a second and maybe third time later in the year or in the following year to cement it. A child for whom the first introduction is sufficient for complete understanding thus winds up very bored.

The bad: its approach to computation did NOT work for my kids. They were shown several different algorithms, but never had sufficient practice in any of them, and wound up getting confused, using pieces of one algorithm and pieces of another, and very confidently coming up with an answer. A wrong answer. I had to work with them extensively at home on subtraction and on multi-digit multiplication.

The fact practice consists nearly entirely of playing games. Teachers seem to forego games if they're running behind schedule, so fact practice is limited. Teachers in our school wound up doing Mad Minutes because kids were so weak on facts. I think the new edition might address this, but I'm not sure.

Waaaayyyyy too much calculator use, with the rationalization that they're a part of life, and kids need to know how to use them. Sorry, but first-graders do NOT need to know how to use calculators. They can learn to use them in about thirty seconds flat in fifth or sixth or seventh grade.

The company boasts that schools' test scores go up after implementation, but what I've heard from teachers in quite a few schools that have implemented it is that a) the curriculum is aligned to state tests/standards, and many schools switched to EM because their current curriculum wasn't aligned, and b) teachers find that the lessons are too long to fit into their math period, and are encouraged by the publisher to increase their math time. Perhaps any increase in scores is more related to the extra time being spent on math?

Anyway, I used different books at home with the kids, and by fifth grade my kids were so much more proficient than their classmates with fractions that their teacher asked me to make her a copy of the materials I was using so that she could give it to the other kids in the class, who were struggling. By the third or fourth year, many of the teachers had started supplementing with outside materials to address the weak areas.

Here's a method they teach for multi-digit multiplication -- and they don't bother having the kids explore why it works:

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/4458

 

My head hurt trying to figure out what the heck they were talking about. I sure hope DD's new math book doesn't try teaching multi digit multiplication like that or we are both in a world of trouble.

 

Thank you, guys. I'm a little nervous about it, after reading this discussion and some of those links.

But, I didn't think that lattice method was too bad, really. I mean, the original algorithm we learned as kids for multiplying 2,314 by 157 wasn't any easier or harder, I don't think -- just something we learned how to do. I don't have much opinion on *how* my kids are taught to do multiplication, as long as they're given some reasoning behind it. (I can see how that would be a weakness, if Everyday Math doesn't explain the reason why something works.) I actually don't mind kids learning to use calculators early on -- how often do you multiply a three-digit number times a four-digit number on paper, as an adult?

I'm going to talk to some other parents who have older kids at this school, and see what they think -- it's a private school, and they tested Everyday Math in 2nd grade last year, and made the decision to go to it in kindergarten, 1st and 3rd this year. Fourth grade will be converting next year.

Hmmm.

 

My neice's used it, I think, and I remember the lattice multiplication being confusing, and hard to work with to help her understand it.

I actually hate when kids younger than 5th grade use calculators. First of all, they aren't taught long division until 5th or 6th grade, and the same for mutiplying bigger than 2 digit by 2 digit problems. When children get calculators in the primary grades, they use then instead of learning their addition and multiplication facts, and that really hurts them when they get to algebra and need a caluclator to solve something like "7x + 4=32", because they don't know their multiples of 7.

That said, my boys do know how to use a calculator, but they use it for huge numbers where they are making up the problems, and never for school or school work.

 

Lattice multiplication is actually pretty neat, and would be a cool project for older kids -- fifth or sixth grade -- to explore and explain why it works. However, in EM it is introduced in third grade without explanation as a trick to multiply two-digit numbers.

The other algorithm they encourage use of for multi-digit multiplication is the Partial Products method, which is essentially just use of the distributive property:

46*83 = 40*80 + 40*3 + 6*80 + 6*3.

That's fine for that sort of problem, but using it for larger multiplication problems leads to a LOT of room for error. 4386*5361 will have 16 different partial products, and lots of opportunity for a child (or heck, an adult...) to drop a zero or two.

And whether or not one multiplies larger numbers often as an adult, it does (for me, at least) happen occasionally. Kids need to learn how to do it so that it's second nature.

Incidentally, the algorithm they teach for addition is not the traditional one we learned, either -- they add from left to right -- but it actually makes a lot of sense and the kids understood it and had no problem with it. That's fine. I don't need them to do things the way I learned them, but if the way they're learning isn't making sense to them, then that's a problem.

And EM doesn't bother teaching long division. The Teacher's Reference Manual says

 

This is very interesting. Ive never been great at math, however I somehow did pretty well in Algebra when I was in High School. Anyhow, I looked at the link to the Lattice grid, and I did understand the explanation. . but I dont know how it works. Im tempted to try to figure it out.

I guess my opinion is based on the fact that we obviously learned math very differently than this, but I think this is harder to grasp than the way we learned.

I wonder if they would do a study by teaching a group of children the regular way we learned and then another group with the Lattice grid, and then once they've learned it, teach them whichever way they didnt already know, and see if the children found it easier or harder to grasp the other concept once they've already learned it one way. Does that make sense? If my children are taught things differently than the way I learned, and they have trouble with it, I will more than likely try teaching them the way I learned it, to see if that helps them understand or is easier for them to learn.

Very interesting.

 

They taught BOTH ways to our students (lattice and traditional)--that enabled parents to help kids at home as well. Then kids got to 'pick' which they liked better afterward. Surprisingly it was about 50/50---the lattice is not my complaint. It is just one more way of doing something and getting at the same answer.

It is the way they teach--sort of a review- then a lesson, then only sometimes an explanation- then forward some more or bring in another concept. It makes it difficult for kids that dont 'get' a previous lesson to ever catch up. It also has a LOT of reading in the later grades and story problems. For kids that struggle with reading, then math then also becomes more challenging and often my kids with learning disabilities really had a hard time past 3rd grade. Even if you are absent for a day or two it can take a while to catch back up.

They also are SUPPOSED to do group work/games/review, but often teachers skip it to save time in order to keep up to finish the grade level work by the end of the year. A PP stated it correctly that the 'lessons' often take way more time than are given (1+ hours) in the school day so teachers try to adapt it---sometimes better than other days.

Lastly, kids that move into a district in 2nd or beyond (from an area that does not do Everyday Math) really get a shock and it takes a long time to follow and/or catch up--though switching from Everyday Math to 'traditional' math concepts would be a bit easier.

It is wonderful for some (probably most) students and they really like the constant changing formats/multiple ways of doing things/critical thinking/practical applications, but from my side of the classroom (special education students/ and/or students at academic risk) it was not a good fit.

 

Yeah, As a parent of special ed kids I was amazed at how little math they knew by the end of first grade. We pulled them out the last month of school to home school and my kids who should be starting second grade, do not know any math facts, were taught to do all math with either a number line, calculator, tokens, or their fingers. They literally know no math by memory at all, even the small ones such as 5+5. This really hinders them. Once I showed my son the standard way of doing addition, he picked it up in a day and in a month now understands double digit addition and carrying.

The EM works for some kids who can deal with mastery type learning, but some kids just need that consistent review of regular math. My two do not learn in a mastery style and are struggling, plus given that they can not read and over half of their math was word problems where they were expected to both read the problem and draw out the answer using pictures it was just a failure for us.

Next year we are switching to a regular, spiraling math book instead of a mastery style.