Are Math in Focus textbooks good or bad change for students?

By Allie Carney, Staff Reporter

COLONIAL SCHOOL — As the summer came to a close, so did the Pelham school board’s use of the Investigations math textbooks. The district had started adopting the Math in Focus series for the elementary schools.

Some people were sad, some people were happy, and some were overjoyed.

“There’s more language in (the new books) than the previous ones, and they ask the students to solve complex multistep problems,” said fourth grade teacher Mrs. Jacy Gerhardt. “But they give them appropriate methods like bar models.”

It is true that sometimes the problems are complex, but they do give students appropriate methods. Still, certain things in Math in Focus did mess up some classes. For example, in this reporter’s fourth grade class, we had to do bar models and had to go back to the third grade problems.

“The old (textbooks) didn’t give much of a learning experience,” said Claudia Parent (3L).

“I think that (the district) needed a program in line with the Common Core, and the version of Investigations we were using was not in line.” said Mrs. Gerhardt.

This story also appears on the Colonial Times website.