In my opinion, her math class is a very VERBAL math class, where they are currently expected to do a great deal of careful reading and writing...with a bit of math thrown in.
... I do wonder whether this approach to math will turn off the truly mathematically talented kiddos.
It does, oh how it does.
DS was the ultimate math monster until school got their hands on him. By grade 2, he hated it. By grade 4, he also thought he was no good at it. He has serious writing issues. When I looked at the grade 4 notebooks and worksheets he brought home at the end of the year, the ratio of actual numbers he was required to produce, as compared to words, was ridiculous. A single page of worksheet would require at least two paragraph-long answers, and several sentence-form answers. Essay-format assignments were frequent.
We don't have Common Core, but our province seems to have embraced an approach that sounds a lot like your Everyday Math. I don't see deliberate malice in our standards, but I would certainly agree that the road to hell is paved with good intentions (and people who are keener on ideology than evidence). It took AoPS to show me that a "Discovery" approach to math could be a good thing. (I hope it will help re-convince DS that math itself can be a good thing.) But you can take that discovery concept, totally abuse and mis-use it, and watch your PISA scores plummet, as recently happened in Alberta (if you're interested, here's a random commentary on the Alberta debate: blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2014/03/28/does-education-minister-jeff-johnson-have-it-right-about-our-international-pisa-results-in-math/#__federated=1)
One of the few bits of actual evidence I could find about these approaches to math was this one, which makes some interesting suggestions as to why the kids struggle to apply what they are learning, despite the supposed focus on "real-life problems": www98.griffith.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/handle/10072/51662/83897_1.pdf?sequence=1
Oops. Somebody pushed my button
