REFLECTION ZONE: Possible New Math Materials Aligned with Common Core

Last week I attended a meeting for all middle school math teachers and special ed teachers as we took a closer look at a possible math program for next year.  The program was called digits.  It is aligned with the new Common Core Math Standards as one of the writers of the standards helped create this program.  It is an interactive math program.  I liked that it had great visuals to help teach students concepts.  It was created with the Understanding by Design thinking in mind as well.  Each lesson there is an essential question that the students are presented, and by the end of the lesson students are held accountable to answer that question in writing.  I like that part of the exit ticket for the day has the students write and explain what they know.  It is within their writing where I can determine if each student understands the topic.  One piece that was new with this program was that students are encouraged to complete their daily work online.  A positive would be that we would not use classtime to evaluate the work as the computer would record how many questions each student answered correctly.  All of these questions are multiple choice or fill in the number.  I do wonder about students (and parents) making this transition.  I would predict that this would be a huge learning curve as this would be very new to many.  I worry about students logging on to a computer, trouble shooting technology, AND trying to get homework done.  There could be some struggles as well as some valid excuses for not being able to complete the work. Also, not all our students have internet access, or the necessary access for this program. Another positive was that the work could be differentiated for each student.  Some could have deeper level thinking problems that call for application or synthesizing while others could be working on the exact same concept, but at a more basic level.  The program also includes interventions if a student is having difficulty with any of the topics.  While there could be a lot of curveballs to starting a math program like this, and there would be a great deal of time and energy needed to explore and implement something so new, I am still interested in trying digits. I will be interested to see what our district decides.