My dd8 is in third grade at school and has been accelerated one year in math since 1st grade. Her COGAT score in math was 99%.
I think she is bright, lazy, and lacks the organization skills that she needs to do well in math. Plus, I think that her confidence is low, she is in a classroom full of the brightest kids in our city. I know I would lack confidence in that situation too!

DD's math teacher just emailed to ask us for a conference to discuss her progress. Her teacher is lovely and wonderful and wants her to do well.

Any ideas on how to best support a child who feels like she cannot do well in math? I put in an email to the gifted teacher at the high school level here in town to see if he had a student who might like to tutor math to dd. DH thinks that we should just have a family math time at 6pm each evening.

I am at a loss. Bright girl but failing! I don't want to pull her back into 3rd grade math, I worry about her self esteem further plummeting. I just want to help her build confidence.

FTR, her school uses Every Day Math. Dreadful!

You are smart to worry about this early on and trying to find a fix to this problem.
There are 2 paths you can take:
1. If one of the parents has time in their schedule, I would strongly recommend that you buy a great program like Singapore (including intensive Practice, Challenging Word Problems etc) and/or Beast Academy and then highly condense the content for the 8 year old so that you can accomplish a lot of teaching afterschool. And find the areas of weakness and go over more content in those areas. I would also suggest the MEP program but that one requires much more condensing for afterschooling . If you are a mathy person, there is no need for the Singapore Home Instructor Guide, but if you are not, then you might have to read the guide before teaching which might take a bit of your daily time.
2. The second option is to find an afterschool math enrichment center - if you can, stay away from chain businesses and find a tutoring center where your daughter can get a lot of individualized attention as well as instruction instead of worksheets.
I think, from what you describe, all that your daughter might need is constant prodding from you and not too much in the way of "teaching" or "instructions" and this can be achieved at home afterschool. Good luck.

Okay-- see, THIS statement makes me think "Is it really the student who is the problem here??"

This program is so heinously bad, IMO, that it can (truly) make mathy kids feel as though they are losing their minds. It's like enduring a thousand paper cuts in the process of learning to write using a proper pencil grip.

Have YOU examined what it is she's having trouble with in the context of the math instruction and curriculum? It may be that there's nothing wrong with her that a better (more coherent) math curriculum couldn't fix.

Interesting...DD8 lacks confidence in math, too. Her school also uses Everyday Math. She is a high math achiever (MAP 99%, high math grades), but per CogAT, quantitative reasoning is a "relative" weakness" (high verbal and nonverbal, lower Q score). Her school differentiates in math, but does not offer AP Math until 4th grade (she has always been placed in the highest math group, so she seems on track). She has been claiming to hate math since 2nd grade (but seems to actually be somewhat good at it?), but loves science. I have noticed some silly, what appear to be careless, mistakes on math assignments lately. I have been trying to keep her confidence in math up - but it is a struggle. Interested to hear what others have to say...

Oh boy! Her math teacher pulled me aside yesterday and said she recommends moving dd back down to 3rd grade math. Overall, dd had a terrible report card yesterday.
I am thinking that is boils down to a confidence issue. Third grade is harder than second, more is expected and she has not risen to the challenge. I think she was embarrassed that it was harder and didn't say anything out of pride. A couple of people I have mentioned this to asking for help have said that third grade is the great equalizer (as in ha, ha, your child is not gifted!) and that it is likely we are putting too much pressure on dd.
Right now our plan is to find her a teenaged girl to mentor her in math with Singapore Math or another curriculum. It is our hope that an enthusiastic role model will help.
I have also learned that I need to support her more educationally this year. Her homework has been diy up to this point and now I need to step up and sit with her at the table.
I am upset that the school did not alert us before this but all is not lost.
I will definitely look into the ideas mentioned here! Let me know if you run across anything else! We have been doing Rapid Math and we did Xtra Math last year. DD hates being timed and I don't blame her at all!

Have you had a chance to communicate any further with the teacher than email and being pulled aside briefly? I'd ask for an actual conference before I'd agree to pulling her back in math - I think it's really important to have both your dd's and her teachers input on what they each think is happening. It could be any of 1000+ different reasons and it's (imo) more important to try to understand what's up before making a change. Hiring a tutor who can work closely with your dd will help you understand what's going on too, because you'll be able to get direct feedback.

FWIW, one of my dd's is a really creative loves-writing-etc type of personality, and she's gone through huge cycles of being great at math vs completely not understanding what was going on back to being bored because it's too easy - all over the map. Part of what looks like total randomness in where she falls in math really isn't as random as it looks - different types of elementary-level math skills require different types of reasoning, and what the dips and swings for our dd are about is really an unevenness in those abilities - and it took awhile to realize that because of the nature of spiraling math programs like EM. She'd be struggling for awhile, and by the time we'd find out about it and were trying to figure out what was up the class would have moved on to something else then she'd be back on top of things and doing well.

Another thought for you, just something to keep in the back of your head - 2nd/3rd grade is the time at which a lot of us 2e parents saw our kids actually struggle for the first time. This is not the same thing as saying "all kids even out in 3rd grade" - instead what happens with a lot of our kids who have challenges is they can get by in early elementary with compensating, but the change in expectations, type of work, and workload around 3rd grade often tips the coping bucket over just enough that it starts becoming obvious there is a challenge. Please know I'm not saying your dd has a challenge!

Best wishes,

polarbear

I agree with polarbear--different kids are good at different kinds of math, and math comes in all flavors. My DD has high achievement test scores for math but she really struggles with math facts and fluency. I can see how her teacher might think she's "slow". But she has no problem with advanced concepts and reasoning ability. I breezed through geometry, physics, statistics, etc. in school but had a horrible time with arithmetic and alegebra. I really did not start getting good grades in math til middle school after all the drill and repetition with math facts (and I never DID learn the math facts very well--but now finally know them after watching my kids play Big Brainz ad nauseum over the summer).

I think it will help to find out what specifically she is struggling with. Is she a kid who is good at arthmetic but struggles with abstract concepts? Or vice versa? And then decide if she is likely to continue to struggle in higher grades/levels or if this is just a phase.

I have no clear picture of what she needs to learn and what she has mastered. Thank you, EM! /sarcasm
I will certainly ask the teacher for help figuring out what it is she still needs help mastering. I know she is fuzzy on her times tables. She claims they are too much work to memorize and that music won't help her learn them.

I will definitely think about the 2e thing. My ds is 2e and it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that dd is too. I think she tends towards the ADD side but she has coped so well that I never pursued it. I should probably take some time and see if that is compounding her issues now.

I love this little girl so much, I wish I could do more for her, I wish I could make this all go away and have her life be like it was last year.

We are having somewhat similar issues in math this year and her school also uses EveryDay Math. I really think it's an issue with Everyday Math because she does much better with a program like Khan. I don't think she likes all the jumping around and prefers to have a choice with what she learns.

ETA: her teacher lets them do any page out of the EM workbook they want but they continue to take the unit tests in order. So dd could be doing unit 5 workbook pages but taking a unit 3 test.

Why?

My DD10 also had math issues early on, based on a number of different things. One was that she would look for patterns in her papers rather than actually try to answer the questions, so she never got it done in class and therefor the teacher decided she couldn't do it. (She would look to see how many times a certain addition or multiplication was written on the page in how many different ways.) It was also everyday math.
She also had some teachers who decided that math was all about speed and nothing else really matters - for a kid who was tuning out during instruction time and looking for patterns this was dreadful. She ended up believing she couldn't do math for a couple of years. It wasn't until we started showing her some of the more complicated math stuff, like fractals and computer programming and some physics problems that she realized that math could be fun and interesting and something that she could sink her teeth into.
She too was "fuzzy" on her multiplication facts - for the same reason - it would take too much time and effort to memorize something she had understood how to do for years before needing it in class.
We tried making math games, playing them on the computer, talking to mathematicians and others that use math in their field and basically it took a really good teacher talking to her about how smart she was and allowing her to ask more advanced questions that seemed unrelated to the topic being taught to convince her that she was good at math. Even this year we had to talk to her math teacher at the beginning of the year and let him in on her feelings towards math because it was affecting her success.
She may also simply be looking at the math in a different way than what is being taught.
I would not move her back down a level because that would confirm in her mind that she is not good at math and then it would be almost impossible to change that opinion again.

Here's how I see this and would tackle this so, implicitly, YMMV.

I would see going 'backwards' as literally the last ditch and only do it if proven utterly unavoidable. Confidence around symbols and numbers is key here - a surprising number of grown adults have managed to convince themselves that they suck at maths when all you really need is the ability to think in a logical manner - something which I believe almost everyone can do.

On the other hand, Maths learning is based on what I would call a progression in that learning what comes later depends on acquiring a solid understanding of what is being learned now and what has been learned. Losing the 'thread' will be fatal and hurrying a child along without a solid 'underfooting' has the potential for disaster.

What to do?

Firstly, I would want an assessment of where my child is in terms of what is expected. I wouldn't take washy washy statements from the teacher at face value - I would want hard concrete facts showing where the gaps are. Also, i would find out what skills need to be acquired by the end of the current year and compare that with my child's data. Then, I would work towards addressing things.

Importantly, constantly bear this thought in mind to get perspective; from the remedial pace that I see today's Maths education crawling along at, ALL IS FAR FROM LOST. Your child can catch up! You have only got 12 weeks or so to catch up on assuming that nothing has been learned - unlikely.

Next, get some materials -I used Singapore Maths because they are published in English so no danger of a bad translation adding to confusion and the Singapore system works. They also have plenty of tests so you can monitor your child's progress and whether or not a concept is properly internalized easily. I would also go with Val here's advice on getting hold of the common core standards because if you can see your child mastering those then you can stop worrying no matter what a teacher is telling you.

It might not be trendy anymore but because my whole class and I easily learned our times tables at 7 ( standard in the UK in those days ) and I had DD knowing them them cold by 6 because they are not an onerous task to memorize once memorized, mental arithmetic becomes trivial which in turn builds confidence.

With my DD a game called 24 helped her fluency and in turn her confidence. Yoo call out 3 numbers and the other person needs to make 24 out of them:-

3,9,12 -> 3+9+12 = 24
3,3,7 -> 3*7+3 = 24
52,46,4 -> (52 - 46) * 4 = 24

You get the idea...

Take turns with calling the numbers out and intentionally flub some ( give up on some that the child throws at you) to build the child's confidence to build 'sneaky' combinations etc.

Hope some of the above helps.

Don't freak out over this because your child cannot have that much to catch up to ;-)

Thank you so much! The time you've all taken to reassure me has been time well spent!
I wrote a letter to the director of curriculum for our district today in hopes that she will see how terrible EM is and implement a new program for next year. (Wishful thinking!) I have ordered Beast Academy and look forward to starting that with dd.
I am trying to find a teenage girl to mentor dd in math, thinking that a positive role model will help.

I love the idea of printing out the CC standards and both checking to see what dd knows and questioning the teacher on what she has assessed dd on. That is just the kind of logical advice I needed to arm myself with for tomorrows conference.

It was such a shock going from straight A's last semester to failing this one. I spoke with her teacher from last year briefly this morning and told her what was going on with dd and she was slack-jawed, neither of us can believe it. I am hoping that last years teacher can step in and advocate a bit. I know she cares about dd and can help us get to the bottom of this.

I may come across as harsh, but why wouldn't a child doing 4th grade math (accelerated from 3rd) know their times tables. (Know, not memorize.) It's just such a teensy weensy easy peasy thing to do. I don't think it's unreasonable for a school to question the mathematical ability of a child who doesn't do this. The child may in fact be highly able mathematically, but they need to show their ability.

My son who just skipped 3rd grade and is now in 4th memorized his multiplication tables in 2nd last year and then over the summer, promptly forgot them. He can figure them out pretty quickly and at his desk you would never know. Working one on one with him you notice that he is pausing and figuring it out. I figured he needed to work with them for a while. We have a week off at Thanksgiving and I will have him work on them an re-learn them. I found as a kid memorizing was difficult, it was just through repeated needing to multiply that they just became automatic. I can't imagine that every kid in the class has them all down pat and it doesn't keep him from doing his work and doing it well. It would just be to his advantage to put that behind him.

Maybe you could come and teach her?

My DD is a bit younger (just turned 8) but also struggled with multiplication. I had her do Big Brainz over the summer (multiplication video game--check it out) and she passed it. Since she isn't doing it at school (except very advanced multiplication with a calculator for her "enriched math") she is forgetting her facts. Some kids have a hard time memorizing them and retaining them, even very gifted kids. My younger kid is much better at retaining multiplication facts, for whatever reason, but he has a harder time recalling addition/subtraction facts than DD. If you can do intensive drill with her facts and that is the main problem this year, she will probably be Ok.

22B, there really seem to be some very bright kids (and adults) who struggle with memorizing the tables. This is not the case for my kids at all, but after seeing quite a few 99th% kids in DD's magnet have the issue, as well as reading posts here about it, I have to conclude that it is relatively common.

IMO it has got to be hard to do things like long division without having the tables down, but it seems that some manage.

I have the sort of opposite kind of kid (DD9) who is an amazing calculator--give her a page of hard long division and she will do it all perfectly--but who sometimes cannot follow conceptual things like word problems. She would prefer for all her math to be numbers only. She is great at mental math and would like that 24 game, but give her something like "A train leaves Philadelphia at 9:30 pm..." or "Bob is making a cabinet out of 9 pieces of wood..." and it's much harder for her.

Just a couple of thoughts, as I myself am still trying to understand exactly HOW they teach multiplication with EM - it is definitely different than when I went to school.

Part of MY DD8's confidence problem (not sure if this could be true for OP's DD), I believe, stems from random, well-intentioned comments the teacher has made that perhaps my DD is taking too-much to heart. But part of it just might be how they cover material in EM - I am trying to sort it all out. They will cover a seemingly random multiplication concept (appears briefly, and not comprehensively), then "spiral" out of it and do something else for quite some time. Then DD says the teacher says to the entire class "you should know your multiplication tables." DD meanwhile, internalizes this and assumes this means automaticity and mastery.

Fortunately, DD DID work on multiplication this summer, since I was trying to remedy the "confidence problem." DD clearly dislikes attempting to memorize, so I've tried to make it fun/interesting. At a certain point, though - you do just need to memorize them. While DD KNOWS multiplication, I do not think she has the automaticity yet. So when she flips to Extra Math and is sometimes "too slow," she quickly becomes frustrated.

I DO think she needs to develop the automaticity, but I think that it perhaps needs to be taught in a different way. I have been trying to encourage her to practice automaticity at home with her 6s, then 7s, etc. EM doesn't seem to do this systematically - or at least I haven't seen it. We do not have texts that come home, so sometimes it is a bit difficult to follow. I could be misunderstanding it.

I believe this is exacerbated in DD by having some academic areas come VERY easy (e.g., reading), so she instead just globally claims to "hate math." Which makes me say "oh, dear!" She is awfully young to be thinking this way! This child is normally EXTREMELY PERSISTENT in other areas of life, so I am trying to get her to apply some of that persistence to her academic life, too!

OTOH, DD seems to have excellent number sense and is great at word problems.

Blackcat, looks interesting. Is there an app?

It is interesting to see other bright, similarly-aged girls have confidence issues, too. I would like to improve DD's attitude about math! (Trying!)

Loy58, my DD says she hates math and isn't good at it despite never getting anything other than straight As in it and scoring well enough on an (easy) standardized math test (actually, she got a perfect score) to be selected for Duke TIP. *sigh*

You should read this blog entry if you haven't seen it before.

http://www.educationnews.org/articles/one-step-ahead-of-the-train-wreck.html

It could really be the fault of everyday math. But at some point, she really needs to do more by rote to memorize the math facts. For some kids there is really no other way around it.

I think it's because our kids can instantly acquire concepts and procedures, but the times tables just don't work that way. They require effort and repetition.

ETA: I have to say, though, that the effort is well rewarded. Having that fluency is a huge confidence builder for the things that follow after.


My DD8 is the same way. She's a whiz at math operations. Give her a word problem, and she'll jump on the numbers and start doing all sorts of operations on them... before she's fully comprehended what operations she should be doing, and why.

I've explained it to my DW like this: math is basically another language. DD understands math, and she understands English, but translating between the two languages is a challenge.

You should not pull her back before you figure out what her issues are. A one year acceleration in math is not much and should not pose difficulties with a 99% ability level in general although I am not familiar with COGAT. The problem may not be math per se. Does she have trouble applying and/or explaining math concepts with word problems? Is she missing some foundational undepinning that is making her current math difficult/cumbersome?

And there is where my shame comes in...I have no idea. This is why tomorrows conference is so very important. We need to discover where her weaknesses lie and how to remedy them. I feel so foolish for trusting the school to do the job.

I am totally against putting her back as of right now. She is working much harder now (well, she worked harder yesterday than I've ever seen. Let's see if this continues.) and is committed to trying. She says that it would be humiliating to move to 3rd grade math, even though she has friends in that class.

We got an appointment to see about ADHD but are on a waiting list to see the doctor. We could go to our Family Practitioner but I don't feel entirely comfortable having him diagnose her. He is a great doctor, I just don't think that he sees this enough to do the most thorough job.

Thinking ahead to tomorrow and what questions I am going to need to ask made me think of this clip:
HA!

DD and DS did Big Brainz on our PC. It's also called "timez attack". There is a free version and deluxe version. DS in particular (Mr. Lazy) got VERY into it even though he still wasn't in first grade yet and still remembers all the facts.

The pscyh who just assessed DD said she is most likely a visual thinker (very high perceptual reasoning, like 150), and acted like it's a given (or at least not at all surprising) that she would struggle with math facts. She said she would send me some stuff to help but I haven't gotten it yet. If there is anything good there, I will share it.

My DD and I are both people who have a great deal of difficulty with rote memorization-- particularly of numbers.

We can't "memorize." We only gain fluency through use. It's a brain wiring quirk, I think.

I mean, clearly I can memorize-- I have most of the periodic table and all of my basic math facts, tons of neuroanatomy, etc. down cold. So can DD. But it just doesn't happen through deliberate "I'm going to memorize these things." Flashcards are pretty much useless to either one of us.

We also are both applications-oriented-- and it doesn't take a lot of repetitions before we HAVE stuff memorized if we go that particular pathway. Maybe two or three repetitions.

The answer for us as learners is to entirely skip the rote mechanical operations problems, and move straight to the kind that involve that "translation" that UM and Dude discussed above.

Spiraling is a disaster for DD and I both. We get almost nothing out of it, because it doesn't go DEEP enough to 'stick' with either one of us.


I figured I'd mention this to note that a lack of ability to work "real-world" or "word" problems does NOT necessarily come as a package deal with inability to memorize math facts. I'd always assumed the opposite, in fact, based on my family's N of 3.

We had a really good conference. Her teacher was surprised that we were so dismayed by the report card and said that it just shows room for growth.
The math problem is on the way to being solved but my husband and I discovered that we don't really appreciate the style of the math teacher. We were offered the chance to move dd into 3rd grade math which only has 10 students (dreamy class size!) or have her remain in 4th. We really just want a new math teacher! Not that it is going to happen...
We're doing the Big Brainz at home, I ordered Beast Academy and found a teenaged calculus student to mentor dd. We should be on the right track!

If my kid were in a school using Everyday Math, I would be relentless in my efforts to get it replaced.

Master of None, I love your post. My DD8 is similar. She will groan at word problems unless it is something she thinks is interesting, then she lights up. I can only get her to practice things like multiplication facts, if it is speed drills. There must be some competitive element involved. It has become a game of my own to challenge her enough that she doesn't hate it because its boring but also not pushing too hard because too hard is also boring or it can't be uninteresting. It is amazing the difference in the level of work she can do if the problem or issue is interesting to her. If I could find an entire curriculum that revolved around gymnastics, certain tv shows, and wild colored fashion, she would probably win a Millennium Prize.

I'm beginning to be very afraid of Everyday math and DD is only in first grade.