Everyday Math

I hear a lot about it, 90% negative.

This program was invented in a certain time and place with certain goals. Now it is being sold with high-pressure salesmanship at different times and places to students and teachers with different needs. Also as the program has developed over time it has developed layers of growth that have changed it a lot from the original vision.

The “mathematically correct” website has reviews of various programs and Everyday Math got a weak mark.

Thanks for the website, Victoria.

Everyday Math is like Whole Reading was to reading. I think it is a confusing program for most kids (LD or not!) But mention it to the school and they give a knee-jerk defense of it. The teacher can only get through 25% of the program in a school year!

I ended up going to the book store and buying a good old-fashioned math workbook with clear instruction and lots of practice, and it’s working fine.

I * think* everyday math is similar to Terc and chicago math?

If so, then I have to say my LD son did better with this “whole math” format than he does with the traditional teaching he is currently getting at his LD school. In the mainstream he had TERC, and for whatever reason, it really made sense to his brain! He understood why things worked, and how the numbers related to each other. In his LD school they are taught in a more routine manner, with a lot of repeitition, but less discussion about the underlying mathematical principles. So I think it just depends on the child’s strengths and weaknesses, like everything else.!

Right, Karen. It would mostly be a disaster for kids with language-based LD’s. But it is not a strong math program overall. It is more like whole language is to reading from what I have read. I personally would prefer a program like Math-U-See for LD kids if I were choosing. Or a traditional math program with LMB On Cloud Nine techniques might work, too.

Janis

As I understand it (and this is second-hand info from reading various sites, so check it yourself) Everyday Math is the outgrowth of Chicago Math. This was a math program designed in the late seventies/early eighties, with the anti-traditional style of the times, intended to reach inner-city kids in a failed system who had had poor and disconnected teaching with constant staff turnover, lack of materials, etc. The program was designed around a lot of group work and discussion (fashion of the times plus an attempt to be different from previous bad experiences.) It was planned to have a lot of review integrated because the students’ backgrounds were all mixed up. There were no textbooks because the school culture was anti-text, as well as the fashion of the times and an attempt to get away from mechanical copying into blanks. There was in general comparatively little written work for the same reasons. The lessons were supposed to be open-ended and flexible so the teacher could work with the needs and interests of the students. In the spirit of New Math, there was a lot of discussion into the theory behind math, and little rote learning of math processes.
As far as I can figure, this urban-upgrading program was retitled as Everyday Math and recycled and had a lot of additional paperwork added and is now being sold to upscale suburban and private schools (including one where I declined to send my daughter for exactly this reason.)
The addition of more and more worksheets has made suburban parents happier (although Mathematically Correct points out that the materials are scattered in three or four different resource files — because of accretions over time I think — making it difficult to organize.) However, this is kind of self-contradictory, where the main focus of the original program was to get away from filling in blanks and to do real math as an exercise in working together.
The mathematical theory part is maybe-yes-maybe-no. It takes a well-trained teacher who is familiar with teaching strategies AND knowledgeable about math foundations AND knows the EM curriculum to make good use of this kind of thing. As New Math proved disastrously, a theoretical program in the hands of the average teacher and the average student who needs concrete handles is an exercise in confusion and frustration for everyone.
The reduction in rote activities is another maybe-yes-maybe-no. A good teacher should use enough class activities and supplementary material to make sure that skills are really learned, but in many cases this doesn’t happen.
Grouping lessons around themes and having different people prepare different themes has led to a very uneven presentation, also noted by Mathematically Correct.

The comparison of EM with “whole-language” is definitely apt. Revently I re-read parts of a book I got in the eighties at the beginning of the Whole Language movement. (Reading, Writing, & Language) Although I personally would not use many of the approaches outlined, nonetheless the plan was a reasonably sound and complete reading-and-writing curriculum. The author states unilaterally (stated as fact but really just her own opinion) that phonics belongs in the writing and spelling program rather than in reading. However she does outline a good phonics and spelling program in this approach. Unfortunately when these responsible Whole Language people went back to their universities and “whole-language” hit the classrooms, a lot of the things that involved hard work just happened to get left out, including that detailed writing-spelling-phonics program. This is the same kind of complaint I am hearing about Everyday Math — it leaves an awful lot up to the teacher, and that is fine if you have a dedicated and knowledgeable teacher, a disaster if you have a time-server or a poor young thing who has no understanding of what this is all about. All the “hard” stuff gets left out, the hard stuff of course being the central core of the program and the raison d’etre of the class.

As I understand it (and this is second-hand info from reading various sites, so check it yourself) Everyday Math is the outgrowth of Chicago Math. This was a math program designed in the late seventies/early eighties, with the anti-traditional style of the times, intended to reach inner-city kids in a failed system who had had poor and disconnected teaching with constant staff turnover, lack of materials, etc. The program was designed around a lot of group work and discussion (fashion of the times plus an attempt to be different from previous bad experiences.) It was planned to have a lot of review integrated because the students’ backgrounds were all mixed up. There were no textbooks because the school culture was anti-text, as well as the fashion of the times and an attempt to get away from mechanical copying into blanks. There was in general comparatively little written work for the same reasons. The lessons were supposed to be open-ended and flexible so the teacher could work with the needs and interests of the students. In the spirit of New Math, there was a lot of discussion into the theory behind math, and little rote learning of math processes.
As far as I can figure, this urban-upgrading program was retitled as Everyday Math and recycled and had a lot of additional paperwork added and is now being sold to upscale suburban and private schools (including one where I declined to send my daughter for exactly this reason.)
The addition of more and more worksheets has made suburban parents happier (although Mathematically Correct points out that the materials are scattered in three or four different resource files — because of accretions over time I think — making it difficult to organize.) However, this is kind of self-contradictory, where the main focus of the original program was to get away from filling in blanks and to do real math as an exercise in working together.
The mathematical theory part is maybe-yes-maybe-no. It takes a well-trained teacher who is familiar with teaching strategies AND knowledgeable about math foundations AND knows the EM curriculum to make good use of this kind of thing. As New Math proved disastrously, a theoretical program in the hands of the average teacher and the average student who needs concrete handles is an exercise in confusion and frustration for everyone.
The reduction in rote activities is another maybe-yes-maybe-no. A good teacher should use enough class activities and supplementary material to make sure that skills are really learned, but in many cases this doesn’t happen.
Grouping lessons around themes and having different people prepare different themes has led to a very uneven presentation, also noted by Mathematically Correct.

The comparison of EM with “whole-language” is definitely apt. Revently I re-read parts of a book I got in the eighties at the beginning of the Whole Language movement. (Reading, Writing, & Language) Although I personally would not use many of the approaches outlined, nonetheless the plan was a reasonably sound and complete reading-and-writing curriculum. The author states unilaterally (stated as fact but really just her own opinion) that phonics belongs in the writing and spelling program rather than in reading. However she does outline a good phonics and spelling program in this approach. Unfortunately when these responsible Whole Language people went back to their universities and “whole-language” hit the classrooms, a lot of the things that involved hard work just happened to get left out, including that detailed writing-spelling-phonics program. This is the same kind of complaint I am hearing about Everyday Math — it leaves an awful lot up to the teacher, and that is fine if you have a dedicated and knowledgeable teacher, a disaster if you have a time-server or a poor young thing who has no understanding of what this is all about. All the “hard” stuff gets left out, the hard stuff of course being the central core of the program and the raison d’etre of the class.

Here’s an example of how TERC was more meaningful to my dyslexic /LD son.

When they started to learn times tables in 3rd grade, instead of just memorizing the tables, the children cut out array cards that represented the math. 2X2 was represented by a piece of paper 2 blocks by 2 blocks. 5X6 was 5 blocks by 6 blocks. So a bigger answer looked and felt larger. The children then used the arrays as flashcards. So I viewed it as a multisensory way of learning times tables. It took longer, but he really understood it as opposed to just memorizing it.

Likewise, borrowing and carrying were first learned conceptually– ie that the 10’s place is really just a group of 10 one’s. When it came time to implement the formula he did it in a snap.

This past year at his LD school they learned long division by following a format on thepage, but with out doing the conceptual piece first. He had no idea why he was moving numbers around the page, but could produce the right answer if left to his own devices. For him, long division didn’t make sense until someone connected the pencil/paper rote work to the concepts.

I’m all for teaching concepts, absolutely; in fact I just posted a long outline on teaching addition, subtraction, and multiplication by making arrays of dots, similar to what you mentioned with the squares. Unattached rote memorization is a dead end. The thing I’m hearing about Everyday Math as is often gets implemented is that the concepts as well as everything else can get lost in the forest of details. It takes someone who knows both math and pedagogy to keep the concepts front and center.