Everyday Math Second Grade
Violet Mcdow
Enter the hodgepodge of confusion known as Everyday Math with its fact triangles and function machines and other vague jargon that no parent understands. Ask me what my second grader or my fifth grader is learning in math right now. Go ahead.
Andy Isaacs made the case for Everyday Math here [updated], although some of the assertions are outdated; for example, he wrote in 2009 that Everyday Math is the only elementary school program with a "potentially positive effect" by the What Works Clearinghouse, but Saxon math currently also has that rating, with better evidence. Isaacs, who leads development of the program, is also cited in a 2012 Chicago Tribune story on Everyday Math:
The traditional way of learning math follows a formal sequence of learning that began with addition, followed by subtraction, and stresses mastery of the traditional math algorithms over their meaning. In contrast, Everyday Math teaches children that there are many ways to get to the same answer, Isaacs said.
The findings of this review suggest that educators as well as researchers might do well to focus more on how mathematics is taught, rather than expecting that choosing one or another textbook by itself will move their students forward.
But the basic structure must be in place, and Everyday Math deprives learners of that, giving them instead a spiral that never forms lateral connections to solidify the structure. This fuzzy approach to math can be spectacularly bad for children like my oldest, who is on the autism spectrum. He needs repetition and reinforcement to address his executive function deficits, not a dizzying spiral from one imprecise estimation to another. And that takes me to my third critique of the program: For other learners, such as my very concrete-thinking middle and youngest sons, Everyday Math is an enormous failure. If its "real world" approach had anything to do with their real world--like, say, creatively incorporating Minecraft--they'd love it. But they detest its demands for estimation and ballparking and fooling around with cubes when a simple calculation is so much more obvious, accurate, and precise. My children like math and play math games at home for entertainment. But they hate Everyday Math, every day.
It seems like the math curric. my daughter is doing this year (Everyday Math) is so far behind programs like Singapore. (We used 1B and 2A last year.) The last segment was about putting together a hundreds chart, they've done addition only up to 12 (using a number line or counting dots on dominoes...), and yesterday they learned about the symbol for greater than and less than. Is that really typical for 1st grade?? They did greater than/less than in the two months my daughter was in preschool (a play-based preschool, at that.) She was 3!
Maybe I'm out of touch since this is our first year of PS. And I'm not even concerned that she's not learning anything. She hasn't lost skills, I had her try 3-digit subtraction with carrying just to see if she remembered it from last summer and she didn't have any trouble. And she tells me math in school is boring, but she sits and does the work, isn't acting up. But I know the next county over uses Singapore MIF, which by this point is doing 2-digit addition and subtraction with carrying, as well as mental math. At this rate, will the kids in our district really be able to ramp up to pre-algebra by middle school?
Math Mammoth is considered a rigorous curriculum (very similar to Singapore) and its first semester of first grade covers addition and subtraction up to 10 and place value up to 100 (including the greater than and less than symbols). Adding and subtracting up to 100 isn't covered until the end of first grade.
Looking at the Singapore table of contents, it appears about the same. Singapore 1a (Standards Edition) only covers numbers up to 20. They also cover addition and subtraction up to 100 at the very end of the year.
Thanks! We never did 1A, started at 1B since I'd already done RS B with her in K, and they ended with two-digit addition/subtraction with carrying, and multiplication concepts. Looking ahead in her workbook, it looks like EM covers 2-digit addition without carrying toward the end of the year. (I don't see subtraction at all, but may have missed it...They do fact families, so maybe that leads into subtraction.)
Other than the slow start, I actually haven't had a problem with how EM teaches, after having heard so much grumbling about it here. But maybe it gets worse as you go on...I'll have to find more specifics about what people don't like, because I may continue with Singapore (or start RS C) over the summer if the concerns are legitimate.
I found Singapore to be ahead in some areas but slow in others. I felt there should have been more practice of basics before going for more complex stuff - though possibly they expect teachers to provide supplemental practice outside of the book. (I mean, I know some kids don't need the practice, but many kids do.) I felt that some of the concepts they introduced in 1st grade were beyond the average 6yo's ability to learn without excess work and stress, and I didn't see the point of it, since they just re-taught it the next year anyway. Basically I hated 1st grade Singapore math. :P It could be that the teacher just didn't use it properly.
FTR my kids are still doing Singapore in 5th grade, and things have improved. I'd still say they are light in some areas and ambitious and others. My "average" math kid is actually doing really well, but she has needed a lot of one-on-one over the years, so I'm not sure Singapore gets the credit. :)
I don't know what math they did here. My daughter is currently in K in a K-2 school. My son is 4th grade and was advanced in these grades. I did feel that math was a bit of... review for him in these grades because he had so much intuitive knowledge of these levels of math. I know greater than/less than is a skill that is stressed in the Primary school. They do it at the math & science nights, etc. And kids are NOT expected to come into school already knowing it. Working on it in 1st grade sounds fine.
(in fact, my son is in an accelerated 4th grade class and they are STILL working on greater than/less than -- this time with decimals. Good thing because it made me realize he didn't understand how to compare two numbers with decimals -- So if one was something "23.1" and the other was "23.12" he could not reliably tell you which was bigger and which smaller. So I guess I'd say it unveiled a weakness in place value understanding.)
So it appears they introduce that symbol in 1st grade (but the concept in Kindergarten, using words) and then continue to build on it over many years. (Through 5th grade. There is no mention of the symbol in 6th grade math standards)
(In my son's advanced second grade math class, they introduced multiplication at the end of 2nd grade. I remember because it was the highlight of the year for him, he'd looked forward to it since the teacher promised them at the beginning of the year they'd get to multiplication before the year ended.)
My daughter uses Everyday Math at school, and we do Singapore at home. And yes it definitely seems like Everyday Math is waaaaaay behind Singapore Math. I could have written your OP. This year, my daughter is in second grade, and in school they still have only done single digit addition and subtraction, and are currently learning about measuring things with a ruler. At home, she just finished Singapore 3A where she learned double digit multiplication and long division, with both regular numbers and decimals (as money). It's ridiculous. It drives me batty because the rest of the curriculum at her school is terrific, it's just the math that is soooo behind. The only plus is that my daughter tells me that Everyday Math is really fun, not all that boring, and it's useful as a review.
I think you might want to ask some questions of experienced parents. I was surprised to learn that the only students here on grade level were those who were privately tutored. Everyday math was fine, but our district simply doesn't move ahead until every child is ready. The expectation is that those scoring high on the cogat will be gapfilled in seventh, then take algebra in eighth. Everyone else is double period in middle school for remediation and alg in ninth. That didn't work for me, so we joined the crowd and afterschooled.
Although I know a lot of people don't like EM, I don't know that I think moving quickly in math in the early years is the best indicator of how good the program is. IME, K students can be in very different places as far as developmental readiness goes.
Your daughter is WAY ahead. Even when I was a kid in Gifted classes, we started learning multiplication in 3rd grade and didn't do multi-digit multiplication until 4th grade. For 5th, 6th, and 7 th grade, we did a lot of review. (probably some fractions and such too) This did not slow me down unduly. I still learned Algebra I in 8th grade (the earliest they offered it) and finished through BC Calculus by the end of 11th grade (with a 5 on the AP test)
Played this game for years and it is still fun! (5th graders enjoy it also. It is a fun way for them to develop fluency with mental math strategies.) Not sure if it originated from the TERC people or the University of Chicago Math Project (which became Everyday Math). I wonder if anyone knows. It's easy to differentiate this game as well. Do you have students who would benefit from working with smaller numbers? Deal out 3 cards and have them find the smallest difference from a 1 digit -1 digit subtraction problem.
c80f0f1006