New Mathematics, Old Mathematics
From one angle, the curriculum and instructional materials in this class were just what the new framework ordered. For instance, Mrs. 0regularly asked her second graders to work on "number sentences." In one class that I observed, students had done the problem: 10 + 4 = 14. Mrs. 0 then asked them to generate additional number sentences about 14. They volunteered various ways to write addition problems about fourteen that is, 10 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 14, 5 + 5 + 4 = 14, and so forth. Some students proposed several ways to write subtraction problem-that is, 14 -4 = 10, 14 - 10 = 4, and so forth. Most of the students' proposals were correct. Such work could make mathematics relationships more accessible by coming at them with ordinary language rather than working only with bare numbers on a page. It also could unpack mathematics relationships by offering different ways to get the same result. It could illuminate the relations between addition and subtraction, helping children to understand their reversibility. And it could get students to do "mental math," that is, to solve problems in their heads and thereby learn to see math as something to puzzle about and figure out, rather than just a bunch of facts and procedures to be memorized.