Book Club

I finished Heaton's book, Teaching Mathematics to the New Standards: Relearning the Dance. I found it to be an easy read and could relate to many of her struggles with the new math curriculum. I have struggled with the curriculum in Clarke County, Investigations. It is difficult to teach differently than I learned math. When I was in school I was taught an algorithm and that was that. We didn't ask questions. We didn't know how or why it worked, we just knew that it worked. The whole point of Investigations is for children to explore and to develop an "algorithm" that works best for them. After a period of exploration then a teacher can present one of many ways to solve a problem while stressing that there are multiple "means to an end". Like Heaton I am most apprehensive of students learning the "wrong" thing. What if they think something is a pattern when really it is just a fluke that it worked? I struggle with when to jump in and "correct" a student and when to probe deeper to analyze the student's understanding.

As far as considering this substantial research, I'm on the fence. I think Heaton went through many appropriate measures with documenting her experience through journals, interviews, video taping. But at the end of the day it was her experience. And experiences are different for everyone! Kind of like I wonder if students will mistake something that isn't a pattern to be a pattern I wonder if some things that occured in Heaton's experience are just part of her experience and not necessarily things that can be applied to everyone.