New Math

lol...recently I offered to help my son prepare for a calc test.
He laughed at me...handed me the book...& waited.
& waited.

Finally I said (pointing to a graph), "okay, if WilECoyote is here, & abiding by the variables, at what point will the RoadRunner enter & will Acme be a part of the solution?"

He took the book away from me.

Can you email the teacher for guidance? Or google to see if there's an instructional video out there to help you out? The new math is interesting because it shows you how it all works to get to the answer instead of doing it the way we were taught which was just memorizing things.

Write the problem horizontally, pick up the paper, rotate it 90 degrees clockwise, there are the numbers vertically.

You are not alone. Teachers know that parents are struggling with this. Teachers are also having difficulty transitioning to teaching the new math.

Khanacademy.com Watch and rewatch. The guy is a godsend to my family's homework questions. He shows ways to solve problems in all Math areas in simple steps. Check him out!!

There are reasons they are teaching this "new" math. It may be new to us but it is not new globally. There are many methods for doing math equations and this new math is very old in other countries. I love that it shows there are many ways to come to the same conclusion. The new math is supposed to help with problem solving and spills into other higher math.

I know...I know..I too would prefer to keep it the way I learned and am familiar with. But now we are quite a few years into our kids' schooling and I can see how the new math methods will help kids in the future.

Our High School offers free Math tutoring after school and during the lunch period. Teachers are very willing to meet with students individually by appointment. Our middle schooler's math teacher also is willing to help during specified times during her day.

I am sure you could ask the teacher for some help. Teachers know parents are confused. Our third grader's teacher isn't even sending Math homework home this year because she knows parents will be confused and just revert back to what they know and teach their child the old method. So, we are simply responsible to make sure our child is doing math fact drills each day to keep those sharp. I LOVE HIS TEACHER!!!!

But seriously, check out kahnacademy.com

Good luck!!

Have him explain it to you.

I teach math at a university, and I still don't always know what my 2nd grader is supposed to do on his worksheets. So I ask him. This is actually a really good thing for him to do. It forces him to think about what they did in school, what his teacher said, etc. He has to remember what he did and try to put that into words. If he can do that, he probably doesn't even need my help. If he can't do that ... well, maybe his teacher needs to know that he can't tell me what they did in class so that she can help him.

Most of the time just asking him to explain it to me does the trick. Sometime he either isn't sure or has trouble explaining it. That's when I might send the teacher a quick email to let her know. I do remember one time he and his dad were arguing about his homework. (Dad is also very good at math.) I walked in partway through the conversation and could tell that our son really thought he was right and Dad was wrong, so I googled it. Turns out our son was right all along!

Give your son more credit. Maybe he can explain it to you and all will be fine. If not, talk to the teacher.

I have one answer for you. YouTube

It has saved my sanity on the new math.

It is a new way to teach math that tries to get the kids looking at the problems the way most of us break them down in our heads once we are more experienced with math. But for most of us seeing the problems like that on paper seems very confusing. My sons teacher sends home an explanation sheet out of his work book each week that helps, maybe you could ask your kids teacher if their work book has something similar in it he could bring home?

I just taught my kids to do it the old-fashioned way (you know, the way that actually works). Their teachers weren't a fan of that, and my kids were baffled with the way the teachers were teaching them (tears every night, hours of homework... uggggh). So I pulled them out of public school and now we homeschool. Not quite two years into homeschooling, they're a year ahead of their former peers in math. I have a feeling this decade's "new math" will go away faster than the "new math" in the 80's did.

Please put this aside. Let your teacher teach your son this math. He only needs one person telling him how to do it. If you say even one thing differently it could confuse him so much that he won't be able to figure it out.

This is one reason why kids don't need homework. They need to do their work at school.

Funny this came up - I was helping (or so I thought!) with percentages yesterday. I completely messed up my son.

I don't quite understand new math ... but our teachers have links on their class websites, for each topic. You could certainly email her/him and see if you could be sent some links. Some of them are videos that work through problems. This has helped me.

I think it's about learning logic. I was a whiz at math, but have to have a pen and paper to do it - I have such a hard time figuring stuff out in my head. My kids seem to be able to logically deduce answers - so I'm all for it.

It's hard not being able to help though - but what I do is I double check their answers for them sometimes using my way (which I keep to myself because it confuses them!).

Check out khanacademy.org. I always found it helpful when helping my kids with math strategies.

seriously?
it would be awesome if we could all understand ANY math, let alone 'new math', just from reading a response on a message board.
:/
khairete
S.

I just have to say that had I learned math this way, I would have actually learned it. It seems so straightforward to me, and now I understand why I always hated math and why it didn't make sense. The way I was taught (rote memorization, "carrying" numbers from one column to another) was so confusing, I barely made it through algebra, and basically failed geometry.

I second checking out Khanacademy.com.

You are not the only parent struggling with the math that the students are learning now. Ask the teacher for resources to help you understand the new math and how to help your son. A local school held a math night and had parents come and spend some time going over the the new system. Ask your principal or PTA president if your school could host one of these nights for parents. Good luck

Join the millions of other mothers and grandmothers who help out! You are not alone. Looking forward to the replies.

Now I've got the Tom Lehrer song "New Math" running through my head. Since that's from the 70s or something, it might be worth noting that this decade is not the first time that parents have struggled to make sense of changes in schoolwork.

That said, I'm afraid I can't help you with this topic in particular, however you have gotten lots of good suggestions already. I'm looking at them myself.

You are not alone!!! I hear this very often at the schools! Many of the teachers did not have this in their education.
Now, I just finished my bachelors degree and my last class was the History of Mathematics. MIND BLOWING. This is NOT new math. Lattice method originated during the Golden Age of Islam. Honestly, I'm glad that my kids are learning things that were left out of my educations! I have I friend who just graduated top of her class with a teaching degree from a prestigious local university. She is of the same opinion. Some of the teachers at tge school she is student teaching at have expressed concerns, and she feels she has an advantage because tge new math was included in her college classes. She was very confused with the classes at first, but now appriciate a having taken them.
Honestly, I struggled with fractions in elementary school. I've learned quite a bit by helping my kids with their homework (and the videos I watched in order to help me do that!!!)

Phew....I am happy to read that I am not the only one that is having a hard time with this new math. Thank you for posting!

Ask the teacher for guidance -they have plenty of helpful information that will make it possible for you to help.

I am also highly educated in math (undergrad and graduate degrees in math) plus I do finance for a living, new math is confusing for me to say the least. But the tools from the teachers have helped me help my kids.

Ask for a meeting with the teacher to have him or her explain how the math is being taught to your child. My DD is in 1st grade, so I have not seen this per se, but some of what I have seen so far has been different variants on what I learned as a child. Once I understood some of the terms, it made more sense.

I am an assistant and have to help children with Math. Oh my.I get the answers straight in my head immediately from the way I learned,now everything is take something off over here, push it to over there, throw in an x, then subtract one side and add another and that's for one digit things. I am as frustrated as you and I am supposed to help with this! The vertical thing is well, also complicated. so I wish you luck~! and a hug. UGH

Use the code or words on the bottom of the ditto sheet or lesson module # and look it up online?

You can find a lot on the internet..try YouTube or just google

I always did well in math and the new way is confusing. the one thing I don't get is why an answer is wrong if the result is correct but the child did not do it the teacher's way. Everyone learns differently. Sometimes, you need to change the way you do something to get the same result because it works better for you. One of my girls, recently invited to join the National Honor Society, a straight A student, track team member in High School, self taught musical and animation, has a different way of learning things and getting the correect outcome. But because she did the math wrong, she had to do it over--in a way she did not understand. Normally, change can be good. but........

I am struggling as you are to get my 1st grader to understand how to add horizontally with double digits. She is learning both vertical and horizontal at the same time.