Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Approaches to math pedagogy, and textbooks

Maybe, but how many high-performing Asian (or other) kids in the US are going to Kumon/the Mathnasium/other tutoring services (or getting parental help)? At least in the American case, we can be reasonably sure that a lot of those kids are getting their knowledge from sources outside the schools.

I have a couple dozen random math books in my house (my analysis stuck to four Algebra 1 texts). I've also looked closely at every book my kids have brought home over the years, and I can say without reservation that today's mainstream US math books suck eggs.

I don't know about Japanese math books because I can't read Japanese. But my eldest went to a French school that used the French national curriculum. The math books he used were superior to the American books (I still have them). The Irish mathematics curriculum is also high-quality. Certainly, at least some students in those countries get extra help, but that fact doesn't diminish the quality of the math education in those places.

I would consider Math Mammoth to be an elementary program similar in style and tone to the Dolciani books. The author is not a mathematician, but her background is sufficient to do a better job than most American elementary textbook authors.

We mostly used Singapore for elementary, but I really think I like Math Mammoth better for teaching the Why's directly to the student. The key is to read all of the blue boxes and only do a few key problems in each small section then focus on puzzles and word problems. Otherwise it's overkill for gifted kiddos.

I use it also to tutor kids who are being taught with sub-standard texts at local public school. http://www.mathmammoth.com/books.php

Do others have experience or viewpoint to share regarding TERC investigations as a math pedagogy, such as the math process shown in this youtube video:

Our district used TERC Investigations for 12 years and it was a huge reason I decided to homeschool my younger son.

I have extensively reviewed the fourth grade TERC books alongside the fourth grade Primary Mathematics (Singapore) and Saxon books. TERC had *far* less practice and the practice it had was with numbers that were "easy." So, fraction problems stuck with halves, thirds, quarters, sixths, eighths, and twelfths whereas the Singapore book had kids dealing with more complicated fractions, like 15ths or 17ths (I'm making these up, but it was like this). TERC had something like five longish division problems in the whole book for the kids to do whereas in Saxon it was up around 100 and Singapore was somewhere in between.

The TERC books I reviewed were an older edition. My understanding is that they came out with something to address concerns about the lack of practice later on.

TERC came to my attention when my younger son was going to be entering kindergarten. When we looked at a well regarded private school for him, they very proudly announced that they used the Investigations program which in kindergarten would be focusing on the number 6. The number 6 for the whole year? Apparently yes. This was my kid who understood place value into the thousands among other things. I knew that wasn't going to work, so I looked at the local public school, thinking that whatever they were using had to be better than that, and that's when I found out that literally *all* of the schools in the area, public and private, were using TERC.

(Sorry for the rant.)

Our district (public) uses TERC. However, I'm not sure my opinions would be helpful, because our district supplements heavily with locally-derived materials.

From what we have seen, I agree that it is light on practice and 'drill' in the early years of the program, but our schools were aware of this and I feel the (supplemented) curriculum offered here did a good job addressing this (too much for my kids, but they are outliers). There is also too much spiraling for our tastes, but again, my kids do not seem to be typical math students. There is also a fair amount of explaining and writing required; this was irritating at times but not an issue for my kids; they are comfortable writing and often enjoyed the opportunity to think more deeply. There was a fair emphasis on manipulatives, IIRC, but not sure if this was inherent to the program or our district; specific teachers used their discretion and my kids were not forced to use these if they didn't need/want to.

My biggest criticism is that there was no opportunity for acceleration or differentiated work, but again, I suspect this was district-specific, not TERC-specific. They do have challenge problems, which were often assigned to be thought about and completed over several days; my kids usually completed them during the class period in which they were assigned, if that tells you anything.

The general consensus here seems to be positive; our district consistently has some of the highest math scores in the state on standardized testing, including the new common core tests (take that as you wish). However, and this is a big however, the teachers did not use the materials exclusively, or even most of the time, depending on the unit, grade, teacher, etc. Also, our district has a well-developed program for math help, remedial and otherwise- it is tough to fall through the cracks.