Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Oh dear, second grade math

Arrrrgh! It's the first day of school and I just saw DS6's homework from second grade. It's called "60 minute math", and this page is "Minute 1".

"Circle the name of the shape." (square, circle, triangle, as opposed to his current favorite, dodecahedron)

"Use the number line to find the answer. 4+2= "

"Count and add. (four apples and three apples)"

Lord, help me to make it through the first week.

I asked him if he wanted some Singapore Math test pages to do, and he said yes, and he also wants minute 2,3,4,5,6...etc. all the way to 60. I said, "you want all 60 minutes of math homework?" And he said, "yes! I'm not stupid!"
And then he brought me his (my old) Bridge to Algebra book and said he wanted the pages (of homework) for the Table of Measures and something else. LOL!

Hm. Similar experience (DS6, second grade). Found DS doing an old copy of Singapore Math pre-test (3A? I think?) for fun.

We're hoping we're going through the first week adjustment period. We had a long talk at dinner and at bedtime and he started to share some of his frustrations about school... (although that was mostly because he doesn't like all of the rules.)

Good luck...

JB

Sigh...
We can lament together about 2nd grade math.


My DD(6) is in 2nd grade as well. She had her first day today - so no homework yet. However we did get the "what to expect in 2nd grade" brochure sent home to us. It spelled out the entire curriculum and what the 2nd graders will know by the end of the year. DD is well on her way to knowing all of the 2nd grade curriculum.

This site was fun for my DD this summer. www.aplusmath.com I let her explore it herself and she ended up doing some geometry game. She told me she can't wait until they do geometry in 2nd grade. Somehow I doubt they will get to right angles and isosceles triangles!

Wow - rewind 3 weeks ago when we started school in Florida and you pretty much summed up my DS6's first day of First Grade work. I chocked it up to the first week of getting to know everyone....but, here we are on the 4th week of school now and one of his worksheets that came home today had such amazingly challenging questions like: true or false -plants need water. True or False - a rock can grow. We also got the whole paper showing what the children were supposed to learn for the year along with her word wall list of words for the year - DS6 knew every single one of them.

We got the word list too.

:-(

It's late but I've had some interesting developments come up recently for us.... Hope to share soon.

JB

Am waiting with baited breath, JBDad.

Sorry about the level of work, all. Any chance this is just the getting to know them review phase? (she asked hopefully...)

We're 3 weeks in and I could only wish for 2nd grade math... still "circle the group with 3 dots" here... It's 1st grade math and the teacher pretty much stated she can't go beyond that because her own skill level makes her uncomfortable teaching it. Sad that you can be a 1st grade teacher and not be comfortable teaching 2nd or 3rd grade math. We're not talking Calculus!

Ahh...second grade math. I remember it well...too well. DS9 went spare over his math that year. I eventually made a deal with him: I'll fake your handwriting and do your homework. You do your more advanced stuff. It worked out pretty well in the end.

His class spent weeks on super-basic stuff like 5+3. Ouch.

Val

LOL- Wow, what a deal!

I'm sorry to tell you it won't get much better. Last night was "Meet the Teacher" night, and we got the lowdown for third grade. Here a sample of the math lessons for the year: place value; integers; exploring 2- and 3-dimensional shapes; finding the areas of rectangles by counting squares; using thermometers.

It's enough to make a parent cry.

There seems to be a lull in the traffic at the Kindergarten thread so I popped in over here to see how the second graders have it.

YIKES!

I feel for you and your kids. If my ds5 survives K (homework = practice counting to 30 or higher), I can't believe this is what he has to look forward to.

Oh, I feel better knowing that I am not the only one going through this. DD6 has been through a few weeks of school now and I am so disappointed. Like most of you, her 2nd grade work is stuff she has been able to do for at least a year, probably more, but I have a bad memory . Our meeting with guidance about getting her into the gt program isn't for another 2 weeks, then there will be a "transition period" into a 1 day a week pull out! The rest of the time she will be in 2nd grade doing 2nd grade work.
We have a chance to move her to the private school I work at, so we talked to the head of school and the teacher and they are not quite sure what they are going to do with her, but they are willing to try lots of different things. So, we let her visit the class today to see what she thought. I was feeling quite hopeful that this would be the solution to our problem, but DD says she doesn't want to change schools! She says her current teacher is more fun, and she doesn't mind doing the work everyone else is.
But in the next breath she says it would be much more interesting though at my school where she would get more challenging work when she needed it, and be able to take a "brain break" and do regular 2nd grade work with everyone else when she needed that too.
I actually think she is scared of getting work that is challenging for her because she has always been able to do everything asked. (A bit of perfectionism to boot.)

Why can't people understand what these kids needs? I really feel sometimes like throwing my hands up in the air and yelling at them all. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
(Sorry, I'm just a bit frustrated and tired of it and it is only early in the year yet.)

Any ideas of how to get DD to get excited about changing schools to where she would be challenged, which is really what she wants (and needs)?

Well, the GOOD news (for me only, of course) is I now have confidence that DS5.5 will be considered a good candidate for whole grade acceleration into 1st since he has to test well on 2nd grade entry!

How awful for you though.

Well, sounds like ds9 isn't the only one complaining! LOL. After telling me that they are *still* doing place value in grade 4 on the first week, he sort of gave up updating me what they are doing in math now.

Yikes.

At first I thought your Avatar was a picture of you screaming w/wide open mouth.

I haven't cracked open my son's packet yet -- it oughta be interesting.

"Why can't people understand what these kids needs? I really feel sometimes like throwing my hands up in the air and yelling at them all. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

That has been SO us for the past several weeks stuck watching DS6 come home day after day with work he refused to do because it was stuff he mastered quite awhile ago. They pretty much sucked any love of learning out of him in less than 4 weeks all while totally messing with his self-esteem in the process. So I will scream right along with you AAAAAAHHHHHH!

DS6 came home from school today and had as assignment that he completed in class. (We're hoping that the teacher saw it). For the very, very simple addition (you have 5 apples and you get 2 more apples) he solved the problem, showed his work, and his "variables". Yeah he treated them like algebra problems

Then tonight right before bedtime he was doing that Singapore math pre-test again. There was a long division problem like 248 divided by four. His approach: he knew that 12 x 4 = 48 (he knows his times table) so he was adding up 48s over and over again until he got past 248. Then he took his result (I think he got 5) and of course multiplied that by 4. In the end he didn't get it quite right, but I'm saving that to show his teacher! If he had known the mechanics of long division, he'd have solved that problem. He was creatively finding a way to sum up 4s to get the answer!

Today at school was both good and bad... I'll post the interesting story in a new thread as to not hijack this one.

JB

Oh great, DS7 starts 3rd tommorrow, he will be one year grade skip, but math should be accelerated to 4th. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

So when do things start getting a little less "duh"? Am still upset post-assembly - it was book week last week, and so today there were announcements re books voted as best, and prizes for children who voted for them. But the favourite books were all picture books!!! Voted for and won even by children in Grade 7.

Maybe I do still have gifted denial. I've not thought my boys were all that stand-out, especially compared to some of the children talked about here. But apparently one of the key elements of Grade 1 maths this semester will be counting to 100. And despite having gone back and read it several times, I still wonder if it can really be true that a key scientific learning for the END of grade THREE is that offspring resemble their parents - eg "cats have kittens, dogs have puppies." Really and truly. So are my boys really fabulously smart, or does the education system assume that children are idiots? I'm strongly inclined to think there's an element of the latter.

Did the meet and greet today, and I think DD6's 2nd grade teacher knows about her. After meeting teacher she was explaining to me how she skips the first 20 assignments (because it's review) and that she teaches to the higher grade in her class (it's a 2nd, 3rd grade combo) and that she is always trying to challege her students (I love her already!) Now I know I'll have to speak to her later about going higher than 3rd grade level for DD, but I have a feeling this teacher is going to figure this out quickly.

That's good to hear!

JB

Well, here's the first homework assignment for 3rd grade math--they had to fill in number grids. Again. Love these spiraling curriculums...not!

I'm going to email the teacher and ask if my DD can pre-test out of lessons and/or units, but I'm not holding my breath.

To empathize, my DD 10, who they skipped to 6th grade, came home with her first set of math worksheets for 6th grade standard math:

72 + 13

I kid you not. ADDING WHOLE NUMBERS. I know she's not a math whiz, but seriously? Tomorrow I fear the lesson may be "welcome to even and odd numbers!"

;-)

Wow. In the worst possible way.

I peeked ahead to tomorrow's 3rd grade math homework assignment--identifying place value up to the thousands and adding/subtracting single digit numbers (4+5=?).

Do most kids really need this much review at the beginning of the year?

I think most teachers are still trying to figure out the levels in their classes.

William's 3rd grade gifted math is doing 4 digit addition and subtraction and these kind of math machine things I can only describe as figuring out what number goes in to get the number that comes out. The teacher also said they are focusing heavily on algebra and geometry in the district this year.

Perhaps why we now have THREE MAPs tests instead of two.

Standard math is doing Otter Creek, which seems to focus on how fast you can do 40 one digit addition problems in a minute.

Ug. Just sent DS5 off for his first day of what would be 1st grade in the US, and he is not going to be happy if he gets asked to do whole number addition and subtraction. 3rd grade gifted maths is doing this? Grr.

They are word problems that end up involving 4 digit addition and subtraction. I thought they seemed reasonable. They've only been in school about a week. They also do Dynamath daily which is 5th grade work I'm told.

I was going to post this in a new thread, but it relates...

Yeah, this is review week here for our DS in second (the homework was 1 + 0 = ?, 1 - 1 = ?, 2 + 0 = ? , 2 - 2 = ?, ...) Ugh.

However, this year is getting off to a better start. DS went to the teacher and told her that he wanted to do long division. She gave him a hand written sheet with a four digit number divided by a one digit number. He did it, showed his work, and then did the multiplication to check his answer. Said it was "too easy."

This is a big step for us: #1 DS is feeling more comfortable expressing his himself and #2 the teacher responded immediately. We were encouraged to see that.

JB

WOW JBDad!!! Good for that teacher and GREAT for DS! Way to take control!

You know, from talking to other parents and teachers, yes many kids do need the review at the beginning of the year.

Plus, the teachers take a big step backwards the first month while assessing the kids etc.

One month in and we're still in review mode. I don't think it's getting any better anytime soon.

I talked to DS's teacher again and now have permission to substitute his homework up to something more challenging. But she is unable to do more in class. Yes. Unable. She said she doesn't feel like she has the skills to teach 3rd grade math to my 1st grader.

So he'll go ahead and do his 1st grade "count the dots" math at school 4x a week, work on the computer in leveled math 1x a week and I'll cover the rest at home. He's happy with that for now.

But it leaves me with some serious concerns about the state of teacher education. We know that they rarely cover gifted ed. But I'm pretty sure she should still be able to do elementary school math!

Yeah, thanks Dazed. We're encouraged for the moment. I hope the trend continues. Maybe we'll have a "good teacher year" which can go a looooon way.

CAMom, last year we did homework substitution too. Although I think DW just decided to do it :-O and the teacher went along. It helped to a degree.

JB

Both the 6th grade and 2nd grade homeworks are unbelivable. If 2nd grader has to practice 2-2 then he shouldn't be in 2nd grade in the first place. The same goes about the 6th graders.


This is downright scary. Not able to teach 3rd grade math?

Oh, my stars and garters. That is deeply, deeply scary.



I did/do that with my kids, especially with DS9 for second grade math. I remember buying a bunch of math workborks to use with him (grades 2-6). I taught him how to regroup in addition in subtraction and had him do a few problems. The next time I picked up the book, I didn't see anything else new or noteworthy and we skipped straight to third grade math.

What is it about second grade math, I wonder, that it offers so little new material? Even DS7, who isn't really mathy, is fed up with it already.

Val

It looks like from what I can tell that second grade is more of first grade but they do get to larger numbers.

JB

JBDad- good for DW for being brave! So far we like this teacher so I'm trying not to make her mad. She immediately accommodated DS in reading and spelling without a word. But she seems defensive about math so we're easing her into our way!


Val- I did the same thing- I had a 2nd grade math book and taught addition and subtraction with regrouping last night. He's going to practice that a few times. The rest of the book he can do already so we're going to practice a few things... translation "Show the teacher he already knows the 2nd grade standards too before report cards". I also have a Singapore Math book that covers some different topics that will be fun.

2nd grade math seems to be a rehash of old topics- time to the 15 min instead of 30, money to the $5 instead of $1.

I'm not going to push my luck yet but I'm wondering if "Played ClueFinders 4th grade" counts as math homework :-)

yikes. This is quite frightening. DS5 is starting first grade today. Lately he has been plotting x and y axis, doing exponents, started adding binary numbers, etc. He is easily comfortable with probably up to 10 digit adding/subtracting. He probably could use a little practice in long division and some triple digit multiplication...but he can still do it. His school this year only goes up to 2nd grade. I am worried then will stick him in the 2nd grade math for a "challenge" I would much rather them just give him some independent stuff for math, and read independently for reading and have him answer questions or something. We will see.

LOL, I asked DS5 the other day what his address was just to see if he knew it since we haven't gone over it really. He said "you mean my email address?" I said "no, your physical address like what street and town" Then he told me...including zip code. Then for fun we went through everyone elses address and phone number and cell phone numbers that he knows...and then license plates that he apparently knows. Holy cow. I have to say that I really feel for some parents that have to really work on those things. I know I have my own work cut out for me...but it is quite challenging for some to get that concept. But by 7th grade?? come on now.

Wow, shellymos, I'm impressed with your DS's memory! I'm hoping that by 7th grade (OK, I hope sooner than that!), my DS5 will show some interest in remembering his birthday and our address. He really just doesn't care.

I think that the whole presents thing would be a good incentive to remember birthdays. LOL. DS has always been like that with his memory. It's amazing. He remembers the date that we went on vacation last year, etc. It's his thing. I on the other hand can watch a movie and probably not remember it a week later. I constantly read books and can't remember the name of them. It's amazing on a different level.

LOL. Same here. DS7 remembers any date or number you put in front of him. I, on the other hand, still don't remember my own cell phone number DS5 doesn't share DS7 number obsession.

Good luck at school with all the math knowledge your son already has. His math abilities remind me of DS7 when he was 5.

Ok my DYS is 10 and does not know her address. Trust me that these details are not dependent on intelligence, just what interests them!

Oh, my. I know you said you thought it was fine, but I find this rather sad.


Has anyone read Liping Ma's book? I've been reading it lately and find myself absolutely horrified at regular intervals. It's truly shocking how poorly the American teachers she studied understood very basic elementary school math. They didn't just not understand dividing by fractions or similar topics (which would be horrifying enough), but many of them also seemed to not really understand the concepts behind our standard multiplication algorithm or even the fundamental concepts behind addition with what we once called carrying.

Reading this book has helped confirm my belief that we've had such trouble getting math accommodations because his previous teacher couldn't understand DS's level because his conceptual understanding had surpassed hers.

I just read the table of contents and the first few pages in the excerpt on amazon.com. Very interesting.

The really sad thing about it all is that the topics she discusses should be taught in schools of education instead of the fluffy garbage that gets pushed in them. Courses in children's literature (involving the actual reading of books and not discussing how social justice is best promoted through children's literature)* would also be wonderful additions to M.Ed programs.

Or they could just keep focusing on fluff.

Oh well.

Val

*Yes, I actually read a course description on children's lit that used a phrase similar to the one I wrote. It was taught at Stanford a couple years or so ago.

Hi - all this talk on maths levels has got me thinking about what DS6 is up to. I've always considered his strengths to be reading/spelling, verbal etc but the last few days have really got me wondering. He has been off school again (another allergy episode!) and to get him to take a break from the computer/tv etc I asked him if wanted to look at the maths books that he was given last year (I thought they would be too hard for him).

There was a year 3 and year 4 book which are Australian written and on it stated for ages 8/9 and 9/10 respectively. Well I flicked through the yr3 book and thought no way - he's done harder than that on the computer so started the yr4 book - it started off quite basic add 10 to a list of figures, add 100, minus 10 etc, then there was 2 pages with rows and columns of numbers and he had to pick out all the multiples of 3 and then 4. I thought this would be a bit more of a challenge but wow he sped through it in seconds. OK on a roll... move on, the next section was factors, after I churned the wheels back a few (ok lots) of years I explained to DS how to work out the factors - again wow - out of about 50 numbers he failed to get 1 factor on 2 of the numbers. We went on to do perimeters and areas which he said he'd never done before and he whizzed through it in seconds. Even the speed he did the mental calculations impressed the h... of me.

Should I be impressed or in your experiences is this pretty basic stuff for a gt 6yr8mo old? And should I be taking more interest in the maths side - I knew he could do long multiplication and division and knows his times tables but had no idea what this meant in age terms (on the back of these books it has year 4/5 times tables = age 10/11 - really do they not learn all their tables till this age?) Hearing all the comments on here is making me a little nervous now - its true what they say about ignorance...

My 2pworth is that you should be impressed. I think there's often a lot of arbitrariness in when a particular topic gets taught, so a child doing a single thing at age X that is normally taught at age X+4 isn't necessarily impressive. However, when a child can do a whole range of things normally taught at a higher age, especially picking them up "in seconds", something unusual is going on. My guess is that there are a lot of children of people on this board who can do the actual things you listed (factors, area, perimeter etc.) at that kind of age, but many of us have consciously introduced these things - given that your clever DS's maths seems to be a bit of a surprise to you, an interesting question is what else he may be able to tackle, given the chance! Is he still thriving at school? What does he think of school maths, is he being adequately challenged there, do you think? As you'll have seen, there are several threads here on online things for mathy children to enjoy, many of them free, so maybe he can explore some more while he has to be off school. (Sorry about that, btw - having a child with serious allergies must be so worrying.)

Oooh. DS5 was Mr. Narrative from a very early age. (Like 1-2yo.) He's now my math whiz, and it was a total shock to me because I'd always thought of him as highly verbal.

Thanks, kcab. I'm off to read the article...

In a gifted math class for 3rd graders you have all shapes and sizes. The fact we are moving nicely into more complicated topics daily, and that my son is happy and challenged is a wonderful thing.

I posted a little about this in another forum, but DS5 just started first yesterday. Today he said the teacher gave everyone worksheets with single digit addition on it. I don't know if this was a test to see what they knew or what because he often leaves out details. But he said that he went to the teacher and asked for something harder. He then said that she threw his paper away and wrote out some double and triple digit addition while she went to print out a harder things. He said she could only find ones with up to triple digit multiplication and addition. And after he did all of them she said he got them all right. I was very impressed that she did this on day 2 and didn't make him do his worksheet. I am convinced this is because she had an evaluation on him which she did read, and she seems like a really good teacher. I hope she continues to do things like this...and that they can actually have some sort of curriculum for him. It does give me hope though, I didn't have tons of hope before especially since our school doesn't have any GT programs at all.

That's great! I'm quite impressed at how your son was able to advocate for his own needs. We were not as fortunate when DS tried to advocate for himself at school last year, so hearing stories like yours gives me hope. Maybe I'll encourage my DS to try again this year.

We had open house at the school tonight and I got to talk to the teacher. She is genuinely interested in what we want her to do and what he needs her to do to keep him from being bored and to challenge him. I don't know that we settled on anything in particular tonight, but I told her if she can get him to stop saying he hates school by the end of the year, it'll be a miracle, and she said that's her challenge now. He really doesn't hate school once he's there, he only hates it when he's at home and having to think about it in some way such as what happened that day or taking a bath for school tomorrow or it's time to get up for school.

On a good note, she says those "Math Minute" things are only filler because the math book's homework doesn't begin until the 11th day. Of course, that will be Everyday Math homework, so it won't improve much, but oh well.

Ugh. Everyday Math- what a waste of time!

That's great shellymos! Hooray for a teacher who pays attention. DS5's new teacher also seems great, but we have a meeting on Monday after which I may post again.

It's kind of strange...DS5 hasn't quite realized he is different. I know he he gets it on some level but thankfully he doesn't at all think of it as a negative thing. He thinks, 'this is to easy for me so I should get something harder and if it's too easy for you then you should too'. I don't think he feels out of place or unusual about it at all. But he said that no one asked why he was doing anything different today. Once the questions start I am not sure he will advocate for himself as much....but I hope he still does.

I think I will need to pay a bit more attention to what he's doing in class now, I did hear him say that they were doing algebra this term and he never complains so hope all is well - we did some more of the workbook and I've had to skip over most of it because its double digit addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and he's doing it in his head without working out. I'm making him do the first line to show he knows it because I'm thinking of taking it in to show his teacher and check a) if she knows what he is able to do and b) find out if she is working way past this and if she can tell me at what level he should be working at.

Not sure if I should do this or wait out as he is happy in class and I don't want to do the 'pushy parent' as I may need to keep that in reserve. They do have quite a lot to deal with on the allergy front with him as it is, so I don't like to make too much fuss. I guess I am a bit concerned now as at this rate he'll have finished the whole primary math curriculum by the end of this year and still has 3 years to go - what then? I guess this is the same problem everyone here has - I just didn't really understand the situation as we don't get math homework so have no idea what he is doing in that area. Do now!