I just reread the post on the skill infusers in the original KTM (great job sniffing this out early on) and on Steven Leinwand's doings. I found out recently that the very same SL is listed as an author of Prentice Hall's Scott Foresman -- Addison Wesley Middle School Math series. I think the series (Course 1, 2, 3) is pretty decent. It has the usual sensory overload and includes somewhat extraneous materials, but it models solutions and has lots of practice problems (naked math and word problems). This is somewhat surprising, considering what SL says below. I find the series more useful than Saxon for my purposes -- my purposes being the ability to target specific topics. I find Saxon maddening in this respect. Saxon is great when used consistently and sytematically, but the micro-steps make it hard to deal with a major topic conclusively more or less in isolation. I hope this does not sound too heretical.
From KTM I:
You've probably seen this quote around somewhere:
It's time to recognize that, for many students, real mathematical power, on the one hand, and facility with multidigit, pencil-and-paper computational algorithms, on the other, are mutually exclusive. In fact, it's time to acknowledge that continuing to teach these skills to our students is not only unnecessary, but counterproductive and downright dangerous.
Recently I discovered that these words are the first paragraph of a 1994 article in EDUCATION WEEK written by one Steven Leinwand, who was then "a mathematics consultant with the Connecticut Department of Education." Lo and behold, this is the very same Steven Leinwand who is listed as the 2nd of four authors on the Singapore Math report.
I just reread the post on the skill infusers in the original KTM (great job sniffing this out early on) and on Steven Leinwand's doings. I found out recently that the very same SL is listed as an author of Prentice Hall's Scott Foresman -- Addison Wesley Middle School Math series. I think the series (Course 1, 2, 3) is pretty decent. It has the usual sensory overload and includes somewhat extraneous materials, but it models solutions and has lots of practice problems (naked math and word problems). This is somewhat surprising, considering what SL says below. I find the series more useful than Saxon for my purposes -- my purposes being the ability to target specific topics. I find Saxon maddening in this respect. Saxon is great when used consistently and sytematically, but the micro-steps make it hard to deal with a major topic conclusively more or less in isolation. I hope this does not sound too heretical.
ReplyDeleteFrom KTM I:
You've probably seen this quote around somewhere:
It's time to recognize that, for many students, real mathematical power, on the one hand, and facility with multidigit, pencil-and-paper computational algorithms, on the other, are mutually exclusive. In fact, it's time to acknowledge that continuing to teach these skills to our students is not only unnecessary, but counterproductive and downright dangerous.
Recently I discovered that these words are the first paragraph of a 1994 article in EDUCATION WEEK written by one Steven Leinwand, who was then "a mathematics consultant with the Connecticut Department of Education."
Lo and behold, this is the very same Steven Leinwand who is listed as the 2nd of four authors on the Singapore Math report.