A couple weeks ago, Jennifer and I met with Hayden's teacher. She told us Hayden was doing fine, blah, blah, blah. She also handed us a copy of an upcoming test. The kids were getting ready to start multiplication and she wanted to know how we thought Hayden would do. It was all 0s, 1s, and 2s.
That was a couple weeks ago. Since then, Hayden has brought home a bunch of math work and if you remember yesterday, I commented the kids were 'learning' their 11s and 12s. In my way of thinking you wouldn't progress to 11s and 12s until you could do the tables from 0-10. But apparently in just a couple weeks they've managed to get all the way to their 12s.
Last night, Hayden brought home work where they were multiplying 3 numbers. 6x2x3 and 4x5x2, shit like that. I was shocked that just a couple weeks ago the kids were just starting to learn what multiplication was, and now they're already learning the product of 3 numbers.
This doesn't make any sense to me. Hayden still can't figure out 6x4 and now this. Granted, he may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I don't think the kids are learning anything right now. So, I have a question for all those with kids beyond the third grade. Are they just exposing the kids to new material and not really expecting them to know it til later?
I've done that with Hayden before. I started working with him on subtracting and borrowing a few weeks before they did it in school just so when they started teaching it, he'd have seen it before. Now, I'm starting to think maybe they don't necessary want the kids to know the material, just have some exposure to it with the expectations that in the future they'll work on it in more detail.
Any thoughts?
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