2nd grade math rant. what ever happend to just teaching math????

[OutHouse]

I cant belive i just spent 2 fricken hours googleing my sons math homework. his school used the trailblazers math program and it totally sucks. I dont understand this method, what the objective is and to top it off there arent enough books to go around so they cant bring them home. How does the stupid ass school expect us parents to help our kids on homework based on a system that we have never seen?

WTF are skinnies, bits, flats....

ok here is a scan of his homework. imagine working all day wanting to zone out and you son comes up with this and says "daddy i dont understand". Daddy looks at it, looks at it again and scratches his head and in his mind says "WTF is a skinnie" and shuffles off to the internet cloud to try to figure this crap out.

homework scan.

I think we did it right but im calling the teacher tomorrow to see what i can to do get a damn book.

 

[z0mb13]

LOL wtf??? I have no clue what skinnies are

 

[imported_Tick]

It's a Monntessori school thing. It's suposed to teach kids number sense, and to appreciate how large numbers are. While I think number sense is extremely important, I agree that this is a rather lame thing. However, I was taught this way, and I'm great at math (Hubris cap ON!), so perhaps it works.

 

[KillerCharlie]

Damn.... all the teachers who teach this crap should be fired...

 

[tfinch2]

Multiplication and Division isn't taught until 4th grade now?

 

[everman]

Well how else do you make excuses for making "new" books for teaching concepts that are hundreds of years old and them selling them for more than their weight in gold?
Doesn't anyone think of the poor book publishers?

 

[OutHouse]

Originally posted by: z0mb13
LOL wtf??? I have no clue what skinnies are

exactly!!!!

 

[z0mb13]

candies?? wtf are candies??

lol that is stupid

 

[Malak]

Lol I know what that stuff is. We built cities out of bits, skinnies, and flats. They were actual physical blocks we used in math class. That was like 14 years ago.

 

[Shawn]

It tells you right there.

Skinnies ? A block that measures 1 cm x 1 cm x 10 cm. It is one of the base-ten pieces that is often used
to represent 10.

 

[z0mb13]

Originally posted by: Shawn
It tells you right there.

Skinnies ? A block that measures 1 cm x 1 cm x 10 cm. It is one of the base-ten pieces that is often used
to represent 10.

10 is 10. I dont need a skinny to tell me that 10 is 10.

How hard it is to tell decimal values apart? 1234 you can tell that the 3 is 30, 2 is 200, and 1 is 1000. How hard is that to teach??

wtf IMO adding the skinny, bits thing made it MUCH more confusing

 

[her209]

Wow... no wonder kids end up on MySpace.

 

[Philippine Mango]

Originally posted by: her209
Wow... no wonder kids end up on MySpace.

Wrong, I can't imagine they've been doing this thing for long which BTW is absurd. I swear to god if they had done that when I was that age, I would've given up on math and be as clueless in math as some people I know... Man that ****** is weird...

 

[OutHouse]

Originally posted by: Shawn
It tells you right there.

Skinnies ? A block that measures 1 cm x 1 cm x 10 cm. It is one of the base-ten pieces that is often used
to represent 10.

I know that. Its just that until about a hour ago I had never heard of these terms and i did graduate college . I have two older children who went to the same elementary school and didn?t have this math program they didn?t know what they were either. :|

it would be nice if I could get one of the books and teach myself this program and help my kid with some sort of intelligence.

 

[Anubis]

that seems like an excellent way to confuse the ****** out of someone, even if they are good at math

 

[dragonfang]

that's pretty gay. what happened to teaching calculus in 1st grade like they used to?

 

[Zenmervolt]

Hate to say it, but it made sense to me immediately.

A "bit" is a representation of 1
A "skinny" is a representation of 10
A "flat" is a representation of 100
A "pack" is a representation of 1000

Logically it operates on the same principle as the base-ten system, except that this provides a visual means of explaining it.

I'm not sure I think this is the best method, but it does get the general theory across rather elegantly.

That said, I tend to be hyper-rational and over-logical, so my understanding this may simply be a function of an abnormal mind.

ZV

 

[isekii]

Originally posted by: Anubis
that seems like an excellent way to confuse the ****** out of someone, even if they are good at math

seems like it also implements reading comprehension.

 

[Malak]

Originally posted by: Citrix
I know that. Its just that until about a hour ago I had never heard of these terms and i did graduate college

I've graduated college too. Maybe you just didn't have this when you were younger, but I did. This was in Texas for me.

 

[schneiderguy]

We used the skinny bits and flats blocks when I was in elementary school.

 

[2Xtreme21]

At least it's not that new-fangled multiplication thing they're teaching kids now. They draw out some kind of grid and put the two multipliers on opposite sides of little boxes or something... I don't even know.

 

[GeekDrew]

Hrmmmm... I had never heard of this before.

 

[w3stfa11]

Hmm, that does look a bit confusing, but a school my mom taught at for a little while used the Montessori program and the students overwhelmingly excelled. They were tops in the area, if I recall correctly.

 

[novasatori]

Originally posted by: Zenmervolt
Hate to say it, but it made sense to me immediately.

A "bit" is a representation of 1
A "skinny" is a representation of 10
A "flat" is a representation of 100
A "pack" is a representation of 1000

Logically it operates on the same principle as the base-ten system, except that this provides a visual means of explaining it.

I'm not sure I think this is the best method, but it does get the general theory across rather elegantly.

That said, I tend to be hyper-rational and over-logical, so my understanding this may simply be a function of an abnormal mind.

ZV

i didn't even have to read it all and understood after the 2nd sentence

its pretty logical, and gives you an idea of a lot of concepts

i used similar stuff in elementary school too, without the names i think they just said cubes or blocks

 

[tweakmm]

I'm not sure if I'd publicly admit to not being able to understand my child's 2nd grade math.