But WHAT is different? Can you give me a specific example? HOW are they making it conceptual? To be honest, what it sounds like is that they just aren't doing much teaching at all, either of tools or of concepts. Navel-gazing isn't teaching, and that's the impression I'm getting of it (albeit perhaps wrongly).
I don't call word problems conceptual (and those have always been around anyway). Is there more to it than that?
FWIW, DS6's workbook from 1st grade was no different than the ones we used when I was in school from what I could see. Not conceptual at all. Lots of repetition of the tools. I saw there were maybe more manipulatives in class than we used, but nothing else seemed significantly different. Certainly nothing "on its head" about the math he was doing. But that was only 1st grade, so I realize I don't know much here...
