First of all, I loved the big books for kindergarten and grade one. They are cute and captivating and a great way to introduce math at an early stage. I was a little sad to see that there weren't any big books for grade two or three.
The math resources that we looked at seemed to reflect the idea that students mature grade by grade. There is an evident jump in language found in books; this is especially evident when going from grade one to grade two. Then, in grade three, students start using text books and by grade five all the fun seems to be gone. There does also seem to be a reoccurring theme of pizza and candy when talking about math... So much for that new healthy lifestyle ideal that schools are supposed to be adopting.
Speaking about the text books... Although these can be a good tool when used properly and not too often, I found that the majority of the questions were close-ended. This type of question is good when ideas need to be practised and reinforced but I don't see it as a useful way to introduce new concepts. Students need to get thinking and relate ideas to real concrete situations, especially ones that can be found in the real-world.
Also, from experience, I found that a few of the questions to be sort of "trick" questions. For example, today during my observation day, one question asked students to represent a number two different ways but both ways had to use decimals. Turns out they wanted one number to one decimal place (like 1.0) and the second number to two decimal places (as in 1.00). Even I had to ask the teacher about that one.
Furthermore, I find that some concepts are laid out to be way more complicated than they need to. Like the idea of teaching four strategies to solve a problem and reinforcing the use of each strategy all the time when only one is needed and the others may make things harder for the child. That's may not be the best example, but I still stand by my point.
I think the main point to take from all of this is to understand and know that there are plenty of resources out there for us future teachers to use but that we are not limited to just these resources. It is important that we use the curriculum simply as a guide and introduce other resources and materials as needed to suit our individual students' interests and learning needs.
The essence of mathematics is not to make simple things complicated,
but to make complicated things simple.
- S. Gudder
