09.02.08

Parents who walk into an elementary classroom might not recognize a mathematics lesson. Children are likely out of their seats, clustered in boisterous groups, flipping coins or arranging colored tiles. The exercise could be part science experiment, part history lesson, part story time.

Nowadays, hands-on learning is popular. Why ask kids to multiply 6 by 3 with pencil and paper at their desks, teachers ask, when you can use three plates of six doughnuts each?

Math programs in Maryland, the District and Virginia run the gamut from more structured, textbook-driven lessons that stress computation to relatively open-ended, exploratory curricula that urge students to solve problems in their own way. School officials contend that all the programs eventually teach the "right" ways to add, subtract, multiply and divide, although some mathematicians say otherwise.

But many teachers consider computation skills the end, not the beginning, of the lesson. Problems are culled from the everyday: If Courtney had 10 brownies, gave 2 to Allison and swiped 5 from Eva, how many does she have now?