I began a math club at dd's school about a month ago. We are participating in Math Olympiad. One good thing about the club is that I have a wonderful variety of 4th grade students (5 girls, 4 boys; 3 caucasians, 2 African-Americans, 2 Hispanics, and 2 Asians). I have been pleasantly surprised at the interest. Over the last month, we have been meeting 3 days a week for an hour after school. Every child has attended math club regularly when transportation is available to them.
I was unpleasantly surprised that their problem solving skills are terrible. These are probably the nine smartest kids in the whole school. They have spent 5 year in public school and have never really been challenged in math. Though they are taught problems solving in school it is generally two-step problem solving and involves a rubric where they check off steps which they are required to follow. IMO that is not problem solving. When these students were presented with four and five step problems they did not know what to do because they could not see the entire problem and solution at one time in their heads.
After a month of math club we took our first test. Eight of the students scored 1 or 2 out of 5. The other is a PG student who is an intuitive problem solver who scored a 4. Though this may sound bad, I was actualy encouraged because most of them actually attempted all the problems. The first time I gave them an individual test, most of them just stared at the paper for 30 minutes not knowing how to start, so I feel like we have made significant progress.
All this to say, I don't think we can change the system but there are tools available for us to make at least local level improvements to help our kids.
