By Tina Fisher Cunningham
The Forde Files No 85
Who's afraid of Common Core math?
Shedding light on local issues.
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Tina Fisher Cunningham
Golden Hills Elementary School Principal Heather Richter, speaking at the Tehachapi Unified School District Board of Trustees meeting Dec. 9. The graphic in her presentation illustrates a perception that Common Core math is incomprehensible.
The kids are doing fine with Common Core math concepts and vocabulary, teachers report, but parents who learned math differently tend to be baffled, so Golden Hills Elementary School hosted a Math Night Dec. 10, 2014 to help mom and dad catch up.
"Young mathematicians should be flexible with numbers," Golden Hills Principal Heather Richter told approximately 22 parents of elementary students in the Tehachapi Unified School District who gathered in the cafeteria. Eight teachers volunteered their time for the classroom sessions with parents.
Tina Fisher Cunningham
Please do not try to do this problem at home. It is a joke.
Under Common Core – which is not vastly different from existing teaching methods and incorporates much of the previous California math standards – students learn, starting in kindergarten, how to break problems down into bite-size pieces and to explain how they got an answer.
"They have fun decomposing," Richter said.
The students are taught there is more than one way to deconstruct numbers and to solve problems, and they have a choice as to how to go about getting answers.
"I feel like we're putting the fun back in," said fourth grade teacher Vicki Lange, a veteran of 32 years of teaching.
The younger the students are exposed, the better, Richter said. Fifth graders will have had just one year of the Common Core method when it comes time to test at the end of the year, and administrators are not expecting outstanding results – for now.
