Questions about education

[7960]

Originally Posted by WickedLou9

I'm not sure I fully understand it, but it works backwards from how you normally do math with carrying over and borrowing and such.

If someone told you to add 143 and 257 you would first do the hundreds place

100 +200 = 300

40+50 = 90

7+3 = 10

Then it becomes easy. I could be explaining it wrong and there is alot more to it than just this, but this is all I remember my wife telling me

that's pretty much it.

but by 3rd grade they'll go back to "the way we learned" so was it really worth it? my son is in 3rd grade and a friend's kid is in 5th grade (so she told us about 4th grade).....everyday math (from what I've seen) sort of 'ends' after they leave your wife.

[WickedLou9]

Originally Posted by 7960

that's pretty much it.

but by 3rd grade they'll go back to "the way we learned" so was it really worth it? my son is in 3rd grade and a friend's kid is in 5th grade (so she told us about 4th grade).....everyday math (from what I've seen) sort of 'ends' after they leave your wife.

yeah I guess it's hard to get people to change. Some teachers don't want to use it because they are so used to teaching the traditional math.

[7960]

Originally Posted by WickedLou9

yeah I guess it's hard to get people to change. Some teachers don't want to use it because they are so used to teaching the traditional math.

That's not quite it.......using everyday math for addition works well. But when you get to subtraction, everyday math gives you 5 ways to subtract, and by far the easiest way is to go back to "the old way" (trading first).

And once they start doing that, kids start to see that the way they've been doing addition using everyday math is probably harder so they switch to "the old way."

Everyday math is a good way to get kids to understand addition and explore numbers. It let's them play and figure out how ones and tens and hundreds fit together and get comfortable with. Then once they get that comfort, they eventually switch away from the everyday math methods.