Investigations Math? Know anything?

[Llyra]

I've just found out that DD1's new school has adopted this program, and what I've managed to google has me worrying. I love math, loved math as a kid, and have been a math teacher since 1999. I once had to teach the Everyday Mathematics program for a year, and quite honestly I think it was terrible. And now I'm hearing that this program is similar.

Anybody have any experience with this? I'd be interested to know what you think of it, as a teacher or as a parent.

[Leta]

My experience was also with Everyday Math, tho' as a student, not a teacher. I agree, it was garbage. From what I understand, TERC Investigations is very similar.

Here's a video about it.

[jen in co]

My DD is entering 2nd grade at a school that has been doing Investigations for 4 years, so she had it for all of K and all of 1st. While I don't love it, it's not as awful as I thought it would be. Her school definitely supplements with some "drill & kill" work to cement the basic addition/subtraction facts and I think it can be a better way of teaching kids an understanding of what they're doing (e.g. not just teaching them to borrow/carry in multi-digit addition/subtraction, but teaching them the relationship of 100's, 10's, 1's, etc. and what they're really doing when they do addition/subtraction). In the early years, they do a lot of work with manipulatives and at least at our school, there's not much differentiation before 3rd grade in math (they do some challenge packs in 2nd for those kids who whip through the regular work, but it's pretty much whole class instruction for math for the most part).

We do some supplementing at home (following her lead) with online math programs and Singapore books, but not on a regular basis during the school year. I'm a little worried as she gets older, but we'll probably continue to supplement at home (I have a degree in Math and Biology and my DH has a PhD in Physics, so we're both pretty comfortable with higher level math).

[miss_sonja]

Everyday Math in our old school was one of the reasons we're sending our kids to Catholic school this year. I hated it, DD9 didn't learn much last year. In fact, she lost some math due to lack of practice. Hate EM.

I am not familiar with Investigations. If you need to supplement, the Singapore Math books are good, as is Saxon. We have those and did some supplementing, but there's only so much I could do with a DD tired from a full day of school.

[sunny*pa*mom]

Our school district does Investigations Math and it's such a heated issue that it will likely determine the next school board election. We know quite a few parents that are supplementing with Saxon (my oldest is just entering a private kindy so we haven't dealt with it first hand yet). However, from talking with some elementary school kids, they are taught math both ways, they just need to show their thinking in the Investigations way on tests.

[LynnS6]

Well, our school district just gave up Investigations for Everyday Math. Research suggests that Everyday Math CAN be good, but it's got to be done right (and rarely is). Investigations sucked. However, the teachers supplemented things, but I don't think ds is getting a great math education. I'm going to have to sit him down and do some catch up tutoring soon.