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Teachers enthusiastic about new math
If you have ever tried to help a youngster with math homework and didn't have a clue how he or she goes about reaching the solution, you are not alone...and haven't been for a long time.
And it's liable to get worse.
Fauquier elementary schools are now teaching “Investigations in Number, Data and Space.”
Instead of an algorithm-based curriculum with a step-by-step computation (like long division), “Investigations” is activity-based.
Students manipulate color tiles and counters, small cubes and dice, coins and shells and straws in a game-like environment.
In Carrell Olinger's first-grade class at Coleman Elementary, youngsters rotate to four work stations during math time.
At one station, the first graders are tossing counters that either land on or off a mat. If, for instance, three counters are on the mat and four are off, the student writes a number sentence (3 + 4 = 7).
Other young students are counting grains of rice, first by groups of 10s, then 100s, until they get to the number of the day, in this case, 1,740.
With the “Investigations” program, students are encouraged to “think creatively, develop their own problem-solving strategies, and work cooperatively.”
“I love it because all of the kids are involved,” Olinger said. “For the most part, they spend the hour fully engaged.”
She said that the approach integrates math in real life, and that “it's hands-on and practical.”
Not everyone agrees. Some parents in Prince William County have objected so much to the use of “Investigations” that the school system posted a 12-page position paper on its Web site to address what it says are misconceptions about the program.
Kim Raines, math instructional coordinator for Fauquier County Public Schools, said she believed that these misconceptions arose because parents were “not seeing how it works. How many have gotten into the classroom?”
Encouraging Fauquier County parents to make classroom visits, Olinger said, “it's just as important to educate the parents as the children.”
Olinger, using the new math approach for the first time this year, said that a letter is sent to the parent at the beginning of each unit describing the activities.
She said that it makes homework like a game, much more fun and at the same time meaningful to the student. At the same time, she said, “Everyone is adjusting.”
The disconnect between an older generation and a younger in terms of mathematics is not new. It first started in the 1960s with “New Math.”
The technique was designed to boost students' mathematical understanding during the Cold War. Parents struggled as they attempted to get the right answers when tutoring their children about such things as set theory.
That reform lasted about a decade.
Although this New New Math appeared on the horizon in 1989, some school districts are just getting it...and some parents are complaining that they don't “get it” at all.
New New Math, according to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, is a process that includes “ways of acquiring and applying content knowledge,” achieved by problem-solving, reasoning and proof, communication, connections and representations.
Raines said that the local school system is combining the old math curriculum by Scott-Foresman with “Investigations” as a supplement.
“It gets kids talking about math,” she said. Olinger agrees, “The discussions about math are really neat.”
Although “Investigations” is not used as the sole source of math instruction, Olinger maintains that it provides a good balance in the curriculum with both conceptual understanding and computational fluency.
“It's not that the students won't be able to learn algorithms, but they will understand where algorithms come from,” Raines said.
“It's amazing to watch kids push numbers around and write their own word problems,” she added.
E-mail the reporter: afelts@timespapers.com.
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