Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for October 11, 2006 FUZZY MATH

In previous editions of CAT Tracks, I have confessed to not being very "warm and fuzzy" when it comes to mathematics. Cats should be warm and fuzzy...especially if you plunk down $4,000 for the new improved variety...and are denied "copycat rights" in the process. But...NOT math!

Below is an article describing in detail my worst nightmare...a $100,000 investment so that math class will be "funner". Wonder how much they spent on "fuzzy English"?

From the Greenwich Time...

Math program emphasizes teamwork

By Keach Hagey
Staff Writer

At a recent math class at Central Middle School, sixth-graders sat facing each other in groups of four, debating how to best sort the polygons outlined in the district's new, workbook-like text books.

While teacher Jennifer Jordan strolled about the room offering guidance, the students seemed to drive the lesson themselves, taking turns raising questions and suggesting answers.

"We put our ideas together, we discuss them and then we write them down," explained Allison Litt, 10, of her group's methods. "You get to talk to people about what you are doing, and it's funner."

This decentralized classroom organization, with its emphasis on group work and communication between students, is one of the defining aspects of a new middle school math curriculum the district is rolling out this year, beginning in sixth grade.

Called Connected Math, the program was selected to mesh well with the new, hands-on Everyday Math curriculum recently implemented in elementary school and address some weak spots in the district's middle school math scores in recent years.

The new curriculum, which will spread to the seventh and eighth grade in future years, is part of a K-12 overhaul of the district's math curriculum designed to significantly increase the percentage of students who take algebra in eighth grade, rather than in high school.

"This is a program that's very much focused on the application of mathematics," said Truxton Southworth, math and science program administrator for the district.

Like Everyday Math, which is being rolled out in grades three through five this year after being introduced in earlier grades last year, Connected Math focuses on how mathematics function in the real world, using lots of group work and activities.

"Both of these programs allow students to share and discuss alternative ways of solving problems," Southworth said.

This way of organizing a classroom was so different from the traditional method of a teacher standing in the front and walking the students through a skill until everyone understands it that Jordan devoted a whole day at the beginning of the school year just to teaching students how to work well in groups.

"I've never done as much group work as this book tells you to do," she said.

The methods of good group work that each class came up with are now posted on the classroom wall, reminding students to "wait for everyone" and "respect one another."

The new textbooks themselves, which cost about $100,000 for the whole district, are also quite different from those used in previous years. Instead of marching through a single text book, teachers now use several thinner books, each focused on a specific set of skills, which can be taught in a flexible order to allow teachers to better tailor their math curriculum with the state guidelines tested in the Connecticut Mastery Test.

The need for better alignment with state requirements showed up last year, when sixth-grade math scores showed up as a particularly weak spot for the district.

"There was a dip in scores in sixth grade and we were very sensitive to that," Southworth said.

The CMT scores revealed particular weaknesses in sixth-graders' ability to estimate, measure and apply math to the real world, so administrators went searching for a curriculum that was particularly strong in those areas, Southworth said.

Although consultants from the textbook company, Prentice Hall, gave math teachers a day of training with the new materials last spring, most of the training sessions are scheduled throughout the school year, leaving teachers to more or less learn how to teach the new curriculum as they go. Despite this, Southworth said, "feedback is really positive," from teachers about the new curriculum.

Students in particular seemed enthusiastic. After 20 minutes of group work in Jordan's class this week, groups went up to the front of the room to write their methods on the board and discuss them as a class.

As her groups posted its answers, Melody Deaghan, 11, said she enjoyed arriving at answers through collaboration with her classmates.

"I like it because everyone has a different opinion," she said.

Southworth said that this method has merits because it creates real curiosity in students for how to do something, instead of telling them how to do it first and expecting them to memorize methods.

"What we are hoping to generate in the kids is the ability to be proactive about solving the problem," Southworth said.

As luck would have it...my very next news source provided "equal time"!

From The Sacramento Bee ...

Old math is getting new life

By Dan Walters - Bee Columnist

There are prodigies -- children who have an inexplicable, innate ability to perform virtuoso mental, artistic or physical feats -- but for the vast majority of human beings, acquiring skills is a more laborious process. Simply put, we must crawl before we can walk, walk before we can run, and run before we can aspire to higher levels.

Mental development is fundamentally no different. Most of us may be born with the potential to learn -- to gain knowledge and reasoning skills -- but realizing that potential takes hard work and good instruction from parents, other adults and, eventually, professional teachers.

We Americans used to understand the concept of educational progression -- of instilling fundamental skills early and completely so that they became natural extensions of children's lives, thus equipping them for moving into higher realms of learning and reasoning. But somewhere and somehow, we lost our way and began embracing panaceas that promised educational gain without pain.

Educational concepts that had stood generations of Americans in good stead -- phonics-based reading, memorizing multiplication tables, basic rules of grammar -- were cast aside in the 1970s and 1980s in favor of "reforms" that reflected the moral relativism of the age and would, their advocates insisted, make learning more fun and less work.

A 1989 decree by the National Council of Mathematics Teachers typified the trend, casting aside such concepts as multiplication tables in favor of what came to be known as "fuzzy math" that favored estimates over exactitude and assumed that everyone would always use a calculator, rendering paper and pencil figuring obsolete.

Innumeracy -- a chronic inability to understand and apply mathematics to work and daily life -- is rampant, and the abysmally poor performance of American children in international mathematics test comparisons is graphic proof that "fuzzy math" is an abject failure. For nearly two decades, "math wars" have raged in academic and political circles over what children should learn. California, as the most populous and diverse state, has been a major front.

Hostilities erupted in California during the mid-1990s when then-Gov. Pete Wilson and legislators prodded the state Board of Education to adopt new standards. Marion Joseph, a one-time top state education official, came out of retirement to take a seat on the state board and lead the charge for change.

An advisory panel recommended standards that moved toward more mathematical fundamentals, but the state board put even more emphasis on basics and adopted them after a battle with Delaine Eastin, then the state schools superintendent.

Some states followed California's model and others continued a fuzzier version of math. But Joseph and the other back-to-basics advocates appear to be having the last laugh. With the nation moving toward national academic standards, but with huge differences in approaches among the states, the National Council of Mathematics Teachers has revisited the issue and in a new encyclical has figuratively abandoned the fuzzy approach and recommended grade-by-grade guidelines that move substantially back to fundamentals.

You have to wade through reams of jargon to find the changes. The guidelines don't use the term "multiplication tables," for example, but say that kids in elementary school should become proficient in "multiplication facts." Leaders of the math teachers' council are reluctant to say that there is a major change, instead describing the new guidelines as building on previous suggestions. But a side-by-side comparison indicates that what the council is proposing and what California adopted a decade ago are quite similar.

Readin', 'ritin' and 'rithmetic -- maybe there's some hope for the three R's after all.

POSTSCRIPT: Wonder if Central Middle School will be able to get a refund of their $100,000 "investment" when they hear of the NCTM's shift back to "basics". Hey, they could buy one of those futuristic cats as a school mascot...to give the children something warm and fuzzy to soothe their bruised self-esteems...and still have $96,000 to invest in some new English books! Wow...am I catty tonight or what?!