Provo to teach some controversial math

"Growing with Mathematics" was chosen for younger children in part because it does a better job instilling "numbers sense."

Emily Syphus, a kindergarten teacher at Edgemont Elementary who helped select the textbooks, described numbers sense as flexibility in thinking about numbers — putting together and taking apart the number six, for instance, with the numbers five and one, three and three, four and two.

"And for a child in second grade, it would be base-ten (numbers)," Syphus said. "Understanding 25 would be 10 and 10 and five."

A committee of parents, teachers and administrators spent the last two school years in a "textbook adoption process," which involved defining what they wanted the district's math program to look like.

The committee determined they wanted "balanced math."

The balance is between traditionalists' call for drills, quick recall, memorization of basic math facts, and the 1989 standards of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, which call for deep understanding of math, which Investigations Math is designed to achieve.

After the math program was defined, "we invited all publishers to send us the material so we could evaluate it," said Ron Twitchell, Provo School District's math curriculum specialist. "We had an evaluation form."

Then the committee "identified three publishers that we invited to come in and give presentations," Twitchell said. "From that, we made our selection."

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E-mail: lhancock@desnews.com