Math curriculum

Talking about our new math curriculum seemed really vital to some readers, so I'll write about it before I forget. It all started when I read the book Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics: Teachers' Understanding of Fundamental Mathematics in China and the United States by Liping Ma last year. (I linked to the post I wrote about it.) I know it sounds like someone's dissertations, and in fact it is. For those of us who had less-than-spectacular math experiences in grade school, it is also a complete eye opener. I don't know about you, but just like described in the book, so much of my math instructions was summed up by the 'learn the trick' method. As far as I was aware, there was little to no explanation of the why we did things we way we did. Why did we carry a number? Why did borrowing work? Why did we add a zero or move over a spot when doing multi-digit multiplication? I had no real idea. I did the trick, I got the right answer, I got placed in the