21–30 of 116 posts
Funny how today's leaders in math and programming all learned basic math the old fashioned way; now it's not good enough. Yet no one preaches teaching kids economics, basic taxation and interest rates, and how investing works. So we wind up with people who know math but get fooled by politicians and scammers.
She's doing 2 and 3 digit addition and subtraction by breaking the problem into chunks (I tried to cook up an example, but I don't remember how they do it exactly). I learned the "carry way", so the chunk thing seems cumbersome (and I didn't really know how to help her, since I keep reverting to my own proclivities), but it seems to work, and I see the value in the way she deconstructs the problem instead of just doing the mechanics.
As a parent with a a first grader and child in kindergarten, my observations of the Common Core isn't that the basis, or theory, is unsound, it's more that the teachers were not given adequate training on it.
I have experienced this first hand with my daughter (2nd grade). She's doing 2 and 3 digit addition and subtraction by breaking the problem into chunks (I tried to cook up an example, but I don't remember how they do it exactly). I learned the "carry way", so the chunk thing seems cumbersome (and I didn't really know how to help her, since I keep reverting to my own proclivities), but it seems to work, and I see the…
It seems that the parents are getting frustrated because they don't understand it, and would rather insist on using their methods.
Don't get me wrong, it's valuable to know how to do something simply, but I think that the underpinnings of doing it the 'chunk' way show students how to break very large, seemingly overwhelmingly complex problems into smaller bits.
I'd never heard of this before, but looking up some of the controversy, I found this article: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/03/07/abou... It actually makes some sense. I'm still skeptical, but it's sounding like it's just a significant departure from the rote memorization methods I grew up with.
http://brightbacon.com/blog/work/how-count-back-change-begin...
I'd never heard of this before, but looking up some of the controversy, I found this article: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/03/07/abou... It actually makes some sense. I'm still skeptical, but it's sounding like it's just a significant departure from the rote memorization methods I grew up with.
If kids don't learn how to do these problems quickly, they'll never be able to do higher order problems in a timely fashion.
I'd never heard of this before, but looking up some of the controversy, I found this article: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/03/07/abou... It actually makes some sense. I'm still skeptical, but it's sounding like it's just a significant departure from the rote memorization methods I grew up with.
If you don't learn your math tables by rote memorization, how are you ever going to be adept at algebra or anything based on it? If you can't just look at something like 2x = 4y and instantly simply it....
The book A Mathematician's Lament really registered with me due to this experience.
So, while I don't know enough about educational theory or the Common Core mathematics curriculum specifically to say for sure that it is better than rote memorization, I can say my bias makes me think nothing could be worse.
The math practices I see elementary school kids doing under Common Core seems to be way more like "real" mathematics than what I did at that age.
I will say, I worry about the population of elementary school teachers who are asked to implement this, as a generalization they are the least likely to have taken advanced mathematics in university.
I have experienced this first hand with my daughter (2nd grade). She's doing 2 and 3 digit addition and subtraction by breaking the problem into chunks (I tried to cook up an example, but I don't remember how they do it exactly). I learned the "carry way", so the chunk thing seems cumbersome (and I didn't really know how to help her, since I keep reverting to my own proclivities), but it seems to work, and I see the…
I'd never heard of this before, but looking up some of the controversy, I found this article: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/03/07/abou... It actually makes some sense. I'm still skeptical, but it's sounding like it's just a significant departure from the rote memorization methods I grew up with.
If you don't learn your math tables by rote memorization, how are you ever going to be adept at algebra or anything based on it? If you can't just look at something like 2x = 4y and instantly simply it....
I'd never heard of this before, but looking up some of the controversy, I found this article: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/03/07/abou... It actually makes some sense. I'm still skeptical, but it's sounding like it's just a significant departure from the rote memorization methods I grew up with.
Bah... I can tell you why the first algorithm/example works because of the commutative and associative properties of math. Learning "why" a solution works, doesn't require learning some arcane algorithm. If kids don't learn how to do these problems quickly, they'll never be able to do higher order problems in a timely fashion.