common core math
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Can anyone really explain to me what this is all about? So far it seems to be a bunch of hoopla that makes things harder and not better. In all fairness I don't know much about it how all works, but when I see something like this[^] I have to wonder what was being smoked when they came up with it.
Jeremy Falcon
My son's just started 6th grade. We are constantly emailing his math teacher with WTF's. He constantly writes back, "Yes, this new way is confusing, but..."
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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My son's just started 6th grade. We are constantly emailing his math teacher with WTF's. He constantly writes back, "Yes, this new way is confusing, but..."
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
They're teaching this in grade six? :confused: Doesn't that mean that they're now trying to override the way they already learned? Then that definitely doesn't make sense.
TTFN - Kent
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They're teaching this in grade six? :confused: Doesn't that mean that they're now trying to override the way they already learned? Then that definitely doesn't make sense.
TTFN - Kent
No one said it made sense
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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They're teaching this in grade six? :confused: Doesn't that mean that they're now trying to override the way they already learned? Then that definitely doesn't make sense.
TTFN - Kent
Kent Sharkey wrote:
Doesn't that mean that they're now trying to override the way they already learned?
Yes. One of the biggest problems in the US is the constantly changing curriculum requirements. This means that what you taught in 6th grade might be re-taught in 7th, or that the new 7th grader is expected to have been taught something different in 6th grade as a the basis for what they are going to learn in 7th grade. My son, who was getting a math-teaching degree at SUNY New Paltz, explains that the curriculum can literally change 2 or 2 times in a school year. Furthermore, because of "No child left behind" and other rubbish (and we can't blame Bush, the tenets of NCLB goes back to the 50's, if not earlier actually) the teacher MUST teach to the curriculum, paced at whatever some bureaucrat decided, because the teacher is graded on how the kids score, so teaching does nothing more than attempt to teach how to pass a test. Every teacher I've talked with hates this system, but what do you expect from a curriculum that was decided in a national conference where all the decision makers were business people, and only one, yes one, I kid you not, teacher was invited to said conference. This country is so FUBAR. Sadly, when I talked to a couple college kids from France, they say their educational system is even worse!!! Marc
Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Higher Order Programming
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Can anyone really explain to me what this is all about? So far it seems to be a bunch of hoopla that makes things harder and not better. In all fairness I don't know much about it how all works, but when I see something like this[^] I have to wonder what was being smoked when they came up with it.
Jeremy Falcon
Well maybe it's good for exposing kids to different techniques for doing calculations, especially if they want to do sums in their head, as there isn't one perfect easy method for every sum (with the obvious exception of using a calculator). It's better knowing a few methods of reaching the answer and choosing the best one, rather than knowing only one method and attempting to use it for everything. With the example from Kent Sharkey's link
325 - 38, in my head I would do this:38 + 2 = 40 //add 2 to make subtraction easier on my feeble mind
40 - 25 = 15 // use the 25 from 325 and subtract
300 - 15 = 285 // take that away from the remaining 300
285 + 2 = 287 // restore the 2 that I tacked on earlierMaybe it's a little strange, but as I don't do a lot of mental arithmetic I adjust the numbers so I can add or subtract easier while keeping the quantity of intermediate numbers I'll have to remember to a minimum. I also like to do division in my head in a similar fashion, but that's more recursive and to get an accurate answer I have to remember a bunch of numbers along the way, probably best just to use a calculator.
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Can anyone really explain to me what this is all about? So far it seems to be a bunch of hoopla that makes things harder and not better. In all fairness I don't know much about it how all works, but when I see something like this[^] I have to wonder what was being smoked when they came up with it.
Jeremy Falcon
I was going to pipe up with the same explanation that everyone else did, It's a good way to do subtraction in your head. I learned that and more as a child. The common core doesn't seem that weird to me, but it sucks that they don't have any physical materials to work with like I did. For example this is one way I learned multiplication: Checkerboard[^] This is what I worked with for addition: Bead frame[^]
Curvature of the Mind now with 3D
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Well maybe it's good for exposing kids to different techniques for doing calculations, especially if they want to do sums in their head, as there isn't one perfect easy method for every sum (with the obvious exception of using a calculator). It's better knowing a few methods of reaching the answer and choosing the best one, rather than knowing only one method and attempting to use it for everything. With the example from Kent Sharkey's link
325 - 38, in my head I would do this:38 + 2 = 40 //add 2 to make subtraction easier on my feeble mind
40 - 25 = 15 // use the 25 from 325 and subtract
300 - 15 = 285 // take that away from the remaining 300
285 + 2 = 287 // restore the 2 that I tacked on earlierMaybe it's a little strange, but as I don't do a lot of mental arithmetic I adjust the numbers so I can add or subtract easier while keeping the quantity of intermediate numbers I'll have to remember to a minimum. I also like to do division in my head in a similar fashion, but that's more recursive and to get an accurate answer I have to remember a bunch of numbers along the way, probably best just to use a calculator.
Hmmmm... 38 - 25 = 13 , and 100 - 13 = 87 , so 287 .
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Kent Sharkey wrote:
Doesn't that mean that they're now trying to override the way they already learned?
Yes. One of the biggest problems in the US is the constantly changing curriculum requirements. This means that what you taught in 6th grade might be re-taught in 7th, or that the new 7th grader is expected to have been taught something different in 6th grade as a the basis for what they are going to learn in 7th grade. My son, who was getting a math-teaching degree at SUNY New Paltz, explains that the curriculum can literally change 2 or 2 times in a school year. Furthermore, because of "No child left behind" and other rubbish (and we can't blame Bush, the tenets of NCLB goes back to the 50's, if not earlier actually) the teacher MUST teach to the curriculum, paced at whatever some bureaucrat decided, because the teacher is graded on how the kids score, so teaching does nothing more than attempt to teach how to pass a test. Every teacher I've talked with hates this system, but what do you expect from a curriculum that was decided in a national conference where all the decision makers were business people, and only one, yes one, I kid you not, teacher was invited to said conference. This country is so FUBAR. Sadly, when I talked to a couple college kids from France, they say their educational system is even worse!!! Marc
Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Higher Order Programming
Marc Clifton wrote:
Yes. One of the biggest problems in the US is the constantly changing curriculum requirements. This means that what you taught in 6th grade might be re-taught in 7th
Marc Clifton wrote:
My son, who was getting a math-teaching degree at SUNY New Paltz, explains that the curriculum can literally change 2 or 2 times in a school year.
That's exactly the kind of stuff that the common core is supposed to get rid of. A lot of the districts get locked into proprietary systems for curricula and tracking progress, which puts a lot of limits on teachers. The foundation I work for is working on getting all states to adopt a common data standard for student level data, so that they can be freed from vendor lock-in along with fixing many other common woes.
Curvature of the Mind now with 3D
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Marc Clifton wrote:
Yes. One of the biggest problems in the US is the constantly changing curriculum requirements. This means that what you taught in 6th grade might be re-taught in 7th
Marc Clifton wrote:
My son, who was getting a math-teaching degree at SUNY New Paltz, explains that the curriculum can literally change 2 or 2 times in a school year.
That's exactly the kind of stuff that the common core is supposed to get rid of. A lot of the districts get locked into proprietary systems for curricula and tracking progress, which puts a lot of limits on teachers. The foundation I work for is working on getting all states to adopt a common data standard for student level data, so that they can be freed from vendor lock-in along with fixing many other common woes.
Curvature of the Mind now with 3D
Andy Brummer wrote:
The foundation I work for is working on getting all states to adopt a common data standard for student level data,
How can you do that with the amount of cultural and economic diversity that is found, not just among different states, but among schools within a state? Marc
Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Higher Order Programming
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Can anyone really explain to me what this is all about? So far it seems to be a bunch of hoopla that makes things harder and not better. In all fairness I don't know much about it how all works, but when I see something like this[^] I have to wonder what was being smoked when they came up with it.
Jeremy Falcon
I think they are trying to bring back magic in our cold dry intellectual world! :laugh: :rolleyes:
My programming get away... The Blog... DirectX for WinRT/C# since 2013! Taking over the world since 1371!
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Andy Brummer wrote:
The foundation I work for is working on getting all states to adopt a common data standard for student level data,
How can you do that with the amount of cultural and economic diversity that is found, not just among different states, but among schools within a state? Marc
Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Higher Order Programming
It's a beast of a standard. For example there are many ways to calculate attendance. By class, for a particular homeroom class, minimum number of hours per day, etc. However there are a limited number of fields required to enable all those calculations. The standard has all the fields and leaves the calculation up to the district. There are a number of different areas, like discipline, attendance, grades, household information. Each one is a related sub-standard. Then there are extensions which are not official but can be shared between implementations and depend on the core standards. It doesn't give 100% abstraction, but we've had vendors estimate that it saved them 80% of their mapping effort between states, which is huge. Here's the standard's website: http://www.ed-fi.org/[^]
Curvature of the Mind now with 3D
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Andy Brummer wrote:
The foundation I work for is working on getting all states to adopt a common data standard for student level data,
How can you do that with the amount of cultural and economic diversity that is found, not just among different states, but among schools within a state? Marc
Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Higher Order Programming
Also, here is another school that the foundation funds that addresses the curricula issue in a completely different way:
Quote:
The School of One’s mission is to provide students with personalized, effective, and dynamic classroom instruction customized to their particular academic needs, interests, and learning preferences. To organize this type of learning, each student receives a unique daily schedule based on his or her academic strengths and needs. As a result, students within the school can receive profoundly different instruction. Each student’s schedule is tailored to ability and to the ways he or she learns best. Teachers acquire data about student achievement each day and then adapt their live instructional lessons accordingly.
Curvature of the Mind now with 3D
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Can anyone really explain to me what this is all about? So far it seems to be a bunch of hoopla that makes things harder and not better. In all fairness I don't know much about it how all works, but when I see something like this[^] I have to wonder what was being smoked when they came up with it.
Jeremy Falcon
I think that is stupid way to do math. Sorry, but that is how I feel.
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Can anyone really explain to me what this is all about? So far it seems to be a bunch of hoopla that makes things harder and not better. In all fairness I don't know much about it how all works, but when I see something like this[^] I have to wonder what was being smoked when they came up with it.
Jeremy Falcon
It's not Maths; it's counting. Everyone can count, so it's really easy. Now subtract 7 from 472326598458412365452131236525897456321452453698736985215457. Call me next week when you're done.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Can anyone really explain to me what this is all about? So far it seems to be a bunch of hoopla that makes things harder and not better. In all fairness I don't know much about it how all works, but when I see something like this[^] I have to wonder what was being smoked when they came up with it.
Jeremy Falcon
One criticism I have heard a lot about some 'modern' education techniques is the emphasis on 'research'. With the advent of the internet some children are being encouraged to look everything up and 'discover'. In some cases there has been a strong move away from rote learning or the learning of facts. It's certainly something I have seen a bit of, where giving a person a task they rely more on their opinion than on hard evidence. Evidence they can gain by looking in detail at what is happening. My take on it is that you need a solid foundation in basic facts such as memorising simple multiplication tables for simple things. Then extrapolating from those basics to more abstract concepts when you come to things like calculus.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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Here's a post about the merits of it[^], or at least why it's not really that bad. tl;dr version: it's basically the way everyone figures out change. Or in other words, it's preparing them for their likely future life as a McD clerk. :)
TTFN - Kent
So here's an other idea. Teach the reasonable algorithm, and then actually explain it. Wow! Shocking, I know. I bet no one thought of that. It is after all not that hard to see why it works and what you're doing. If students didn't get it, it's because no one explained it.
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Here's a post about the merits of it[^], or at least why it's not really that bad. tl;dr version: it's basically the way everyone figures out change. Or in other words, it's preparing them for their likely future life as a McD clerk. :)
TTFN - Kent
The problem with this system is that it works for subtraction and it is very easy, probably easier then the traditional carry method we all learnt. But that is it. It ONLY works for subtraction. The multiplication method is different, division is different. In other words common core ignores what is common. A + B = C --> C - A = B & C - B = A A x B = C --> C / A = B & C / B = A And as soon as you move into negatives, algebra and real geometry it's useless.
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Can anyone really explain to me what this is all about? So far it seems to be a bunch of hoopla that makes things harder and not better. In all fairness I don't know much about it how all works, but when I see something like this[^] I have to wonder what was being smoked when they came up with it.
Jeremy Falcon
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Here's a post about the merits of it[^], or at least why it's not really that bad. tl;dr version: it's basically the way everyone figures out change. Or in other words, it's preparing them for their likely future life as a McD clerk. :)
TTFN - Kent
Kent Sharkey wrote:
Or in other words, it's preparing them for their likely future life as a McD clerk.
This is the real problem - education not for education's sake, but to become a good little worker/consumer in later life.
Alberto Brandolini:
The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.
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Excuse me, but RUBBISH...I was good with math when was young (I'm still not that bad) and I do understand numbers - it's not the way I ever done things...
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote:
it's not the way I ever done things
I agree it's weird to anyone with more maths ability than a gnat or gnu, but how often has something like this happened: Green Grocer: That'll be £7.93 please. Me: [Hands over £10] There you go, thanks. Green Grocer: [Hands over 7p] - eight quid [Hands over £1] - nine quid. [Hands over £1] - Tenner! That's the basis of the insano-method
Alberto Brandolini:
The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.
