I stopped by the office to review the materials this morning and
encourage everyone to do the same when you get a chance. You go into
the Assistant Superintendent's office on the first floor and then they
set you up in the board room with the Investigations materials and the
sign-in/comment sheet. It was actually much more pleasant than my
previous visits to 131 W. Nittany - the secretary who helped me was
very nice, and the temperature in the board room was well under 80
degrees F.
I looked at the 4th grade materials my impression of Investigations
was largely unchanged -- that some of the exercises are quite good but
that too many are far too unchallenging, and that the various
computational skills are introduced far too late. I did note that the
teachers were instructed that they may want to incorporate the U.S.
algorithms into their lessons, but this is done with a needlessly
hostile tone that didn't seem like it would encourage many teachers to
do so. This is really strange to me, because there are algorithms
plainly evident in Investigations, but they are the ones invented by
the authors that the teachers are meant to construct with their
students. These new algorithms take more space to write, but are
supposed to illustrate concepts like place value better, so the U.S.
algorithm should not be introduced until the concepts are completely
mastered.
After reading the materials, especially the forwards and notes to
teachers, it appears to me that the authors of Investigations have a
lot invested in demonstrating that they have discovered a better way
to teach math, and that they now have to acknowledge that their new
theories are failing their real world test. The 2nd edition includes
"Letters to Families" that explain to parents what is going on with
this strange-looking homework. Multiplication facts are included in
the 2nd ed. (in 4th grade), and the way in which the facts are taught
is with old-style flash cards, but with a line underneath the problem
that says "Start with ________", so if a student has a flash card for
9 x 12, she might write 9 x 10 underneath to help herself to reason
out the answer to 9 x 12. When a student has a fact memorized, that
card goes in the "just know" pile. Nothing wrong with this, it's just
sort of pathetic the way that TERC has basically given in on
memorizing facts while stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that
students will be memorizing.
My overall impression is that we would be better off with a
curriculum that pays similar attention to concepts without dancing
around standard computational methods in order to make points in
support of pedagogical theories.
Steve