New Common Core math curriculum a disaster

[CandleontheWater]

jodifly....that's 1st grade!!!????

I did that stuff in college!

No joke!

This seriously reads very similar to the exam I used to give in my Ancient Civilizations 101 course to COLLEGE FRESHMEN!

Many, many of them couldn't learn this information, I don't understand how you could expect a first grader to be able to memorize and process all that.

 

[FlightlessDuck]

A lot of you are confusing Common Core Standards with the method of teaching being used in your district.

Common Core is a set of standards. That's it. A list of things a child must be able to know and do at the end of a certain grade level. It does come with things like a list of approved books, etc., but that's all Common Core is. In concept, it's no different than list of standards your state had last year or two years ago, etc.

What everyone here is having a problem with is the implementation of a curriculum used by your district to teach the Common Store Standards. That's a completely different kettle of fish.

For example, "cross teaching" is a concept going back to early 1990's (and earlier) and is not related to Common Core. Some districts might find using cross teaching is helpful so students can apply concepts from one class in another class (I certainly found Calculus made more sense when I was in Physics class). What jodifla is describing (teams of 4 students where each student has a role) is called cooperative learning, and this is a style that also existing before the Common Core Standards.

Here's a quote:

By emphasizing required achievements, the Standards leave room for teachers, curriculum developers, and states to determine how those goals should be reached and what additional topics should be addressed. Thus, the Standards do not mandate such things as a particular writing process or the full range of metacognitive strategies that students may need to monitor and direct their thinking and learning. Teachers are thus free to provide students with whatever tools and knowledge their professional judgment and experience identify as most helpful for meeting the goals set out in the Standards.

Please don't confuse the standards with your district's implementation. Some people don't like Common Core because of the amount of testing involved, or because they feel different states should have their own standards, or they think it's some kind of federal takeover. Whether those beliefs are fair is certainly up for debate. But what most of you are talking about isn't even about the actual standards.

 

[FlightlessDuck]

http://dianeravitch.net/2013/08/23/can-you-explain-the-code-of-hammurabi-and-a-ziggurat/

Again, this isn't a problem with the standards themselves, but rather how the State of New York is telling (suggesting, requiring? I don't know) districts to teach those standards.

If you look, here are the actual standards being addressed:

Reading: Literature
RL.1.3: Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details.
RL.1.6: Identify who is telling the story at various points in a text.

Reading: Informational Text
RI.1.1: Ask and answer questions about key details in a text.



The standards do NOT dictate that students know all of those things about Mesopotamia. The "Tell It Again! Read-Aloud Anthology" curriculum teaches those standards through the way described in the blog post. You can teach and assess all of those standards with Dr. Seuss books.

In the end, what the suggested resource is doing is killing two birds with one stone. It is introducing the students to early civilization while teaching the standards. The students shouldn't be expected to remember everything they heard about Mesopotamia in the stories that were read to them. But they should be expected to describe characters, identify the narrator, etc.

 

[cobright]

Will we be given tips on how to help our children though this? Will we be told what they are learning so that we can support them at home? It's being introduced at our school but the only homework that comes home is simple math, reading, and spelling right now. My son is on 1st.

Ive had my kids in 3 different school districts and every one of them has invited me to a curriculum night where the teachers discuss the various academic expectations.

 

[cheer25mom]

Most students aren't ready for this level in 1st grade. It's developmentally in appropriate.

The testing results are showing that good students do well with this approach, and everyone else tanks.

So much for "No child left behind." This will leave most of them behind.

This is my problem with common core. It asks students to do things they are not developmentally ready to be doing. We are running into it with 4th grade math this year. The school has switched to common core and there is a huge gap between what they are expected to know and the skills they already have. Couple that with insisting the teachers use the asinine backwards methods to teach the material and we have kids who simply aren't getting it. Fortunately, I can reteach the material at home but not everyone has the skills to do that. Yesterday's lesson was supposed to be finding factors of a number, something they have never been asked to do before. They spent the vast majorit of the lesson on number theory, maniplulatives, and estimation stategies to be able to guess what the factors might be. The teacher worked ONE concrete example, ther was no classwork practice, but ther were 2 pages of practice problems for homework. Once I taught DD how to find factors, she was fine but what are the parents who have no clue how to teach math concepts doing?? There is no way they got how to find factors fro mthe lesson presented. It was over thier head.

 

[Cindy B]

Yes- that set of teaching with groups of four is cooperative learning. That is not Common Core.

Cooperative learning is just one way to enable children to learn- it is not a set of standards. If cooperative learning is done well, students will learn from peers and teachers. I did a lot of cooperative learning in my former school-especially in Math.

This district used Math in Focus-Singapore Math -easily one of the better Math programs I have used.

I began with my focus skill (aka: Objective) for the day. I would take about 15-20 minutes explaining the skill/modeling it. Then I would break the students into groups and they would practice the skill. Sometimes it would be using mini whiteboards, sometimes it would be using models, sometimes it would be practice problems, sometimes it would be measuring. (depended on the skill). Then I assigned a small amount of homework-5-8 problems.

Once I got the homework back I could determine who really did the group work or was fooling around! The next day, I would have a group with students that had challenges on the homework sit with me for a few minutes and then they went to the group. That way I could see that that they had a challenge with specific things such as computation, inverting numbers, etc.

It worked wonderfully. Now cooperative learning can't work in all classes, all subjects all the time- but for the most part it works well.

 

[cheer25mom]

I started homeschooling 20 years ago because the year my oldest was to start K was the year the local schools in VA tossed phonics out the window and went to the Whole Language program. Homeschooling worked so well I never stopped; two have gone on to college and two are still at home.

Most of the list that jodifla posted re. History we cover in Calvert's Fourth Grade curriculum, while reading Hillyer's Child's History of the World.

My dsis pulled her hair out with Every Day Math last year, and put her 3rd grader into a supplemental Saturday class with Singapore Math. Needless to say her DC was the top student in her regular math class because she actually learned.

we had GREAT success with everyday math last year. DD made great strides.

\

In the 1950s, the iliteracy rate in the US was 400% greater than it is now. For African Americans that number jumps to about 1000% worse. source and source*



I think Common Core is an approach meant to address the concerns many of us have had over the mindless repetition and unending rote drills of mathmatics and history facts.
It might be the intent, but that is not the reality. It is asking kids to do things they have no business doing.
As the previous post about mesopotamia and ziggurauts points out, students are required to integrate knowlege across diciplines and demonstrate synthesis even at a young age. IMO this is a far more useful approach than the mindless memorization of dates and names of 'important men' I went through.
But, they are not developmentally ready to make these kinds of connections at 6. It is just going to end up being memorization ofwhat the teacher is telling the m the connection is, not true understanding.
The mathmatics program in our district had my daughter fully understanding multilication in kindergarten and algebra in 1st grade. My only complaint is that I wish they would have scrapped the cursive handwriting and used that time to build better proficiency in times-table memorization. Yes, I concede that memorization of basic math facts speeds the practice of more advanced subjects.
So you child could solve this at the end of first grade:

Solve for x:
2(x+5)- 3y=30
4(y-7)+3x= 75

this is a small part of what a "full understanding of algebra" means. I highly doubt any kid with the execpetion of Steven Hawking was capable of this along with all the other algebra standards at 6.
In the end ... it's less about what they learn and more about teaching them to be comfortable exploring new approaches to solving their problems (math or otherwise). A lousy year or two of math or science will not break them.

*Statistics are rough, owing to some rounding and my mathmatics being done in my head. They are given in good faith and if taken 'conversationally' one should find that they represent the reality of the subject fairly well.

It is ALL about what they are learning, because they is the way they are assessing common core. They are still using standard multiple choice tests to assess higher order thinking skills and it just doesn't work. No one wants an open ended free response test because the grading is subjective, but this curricilium is geared toward that kind of thinking.

 

[DLgal]

This is my problem with common core. It asks students to do things they are not developmentally ready to be doing. We are running into it with 4th grade math this year. The school has switched to common core and there is a huge gap between what they are expected to know and the skills they already have. Couple that with insisting the teachers use the asinine backwards methods to teach the material and we have kids who simply aren't getting it. Fortunately, I can reteach the material at home but not everyone has the skills to do that. Yesterday's lesson was supposed to be finding factors of a number, something they have never been asked to do before. They spent the vast majorit of the lesson on number theory, maniplulatives, and estimation stategies to be able to guess what the factors might be. The teacher worked ONE concrete example, ther was no classwork practice, but ther were 2 pages of practice problems for homework. Once I taught DD how to find factors, she was fine but what are the parents who have no clue how to teach math concepts doing?? There is no way they got how to find factors fro mthe lesson presented. It was over thier head.

This post is an excellent example of WHY Common Core is being implemented.

I hate to tell you, your 4th grader should have been taught number factors around 2nd grade. They call them "number families" but it's the same thing. The fact that you feel that this concept is "above your child's head" is the reason the Common Core standards have been implemented. While one kid might be learning "number families" (i.e. factors) in 1st or 2nd grade, another kid in another state has not been taught the same thing by 4th. That's the problem: Inconsistencies across states in grade level standards. Common Core is an attempt to level the playing field and introduce some consistency so that when kids move across state lines (as many, many do in their childhoods), or when they are ready to apply to college as HS Seniors, they ALL will have learned the same "core" set of skills, at the same grade levels.

 

[FlightlessDuck]

There is too much confusion here. Seriously, read the standards for your child's grade. It lists what they should be learning, not how.

Math: http://www.corestandards.org/Math

English/Language Arts: http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy

 

[cobright]

Please do share what program that was. I'm sure many of our schools would be interested in using a program that has 1st graders fully understanding algebra by the end of the year.

I apologize, I mispoke (mistyped?... whatever). She fully understood multiplication as a practical concept by the end of kindergarten and was demonstrating algabraic problem solving early in first grade. Shoot, I have an economics minor and still don't fully understand algabra. She's been using the everyday math program for 3 years now and I think its far better than how they taught me so many years ago.

There are things I like and things I don't like about common core. Beginning last year, my daughter's reading and math education are both done using a STAD type cooperative learning approach. I initially had serious concerns about this approach because she has my attention-deficiency and can come off-track easily. In the end, I came around. The method allows the teacher to focus attention on the kids who need the most help without holding back the students who better grasp the subject. It also builds interpersonal communication skills far better than sitting through a lecture would.

It seems to me that there is always a lot of resistance to change. But the common core initiative came forward to address a very real problem. Students were leaving public education without the skills needed to succeed in higher education, career training, or every day living and working.

The idea that an employer can require a high school diploma and still get applicants who are functionally illiterate is appalling to me. Kids don't have a choice as to where they are born, the education they get is largely determined by the accident if their birth. Yet statistically speaking a kid born in Mississippi is going to get the short end of the education stick. A kid born in texas is going to get an education that took years of debate to decide that they should spend more time learning about Ronald Reagan than Alexander Hamilton. And still, graduation is not even a guarantee of literacy.

I would encourage everyone to read what the common core standards suggest a kid know by the end of each grade, and formulate a disagreement if there is one. If not then the answer is to work with the school on implementation strategy.

 

[cheer25mom]

This post is an excellent example of WHY Common Core is being implemented.

I hate to tell you, your 4th grader should have been taught number factors around 2nd grade. They call them "number families" but it's the same thing. The fact that you feel that this concept is "above your child's head" is the reason the Common Core standards have been implemented. While one kid might be learning "number families" (i.e. factors) in 1st or 2nd grade, another kid in another state has not been taught the same thing by 4th. That's the problem: Inconsistencies across states in grade level standards. Common Core is an attempt to level the playing field and introduce some consistency so that when kids move across state lines (as many, many do in their childhoods), or when they are ready to apply to college as HS Seniors, they ALL will have learned the same "core" set of skills, at the same grade levels.

I should have been more specific, this lesson was GCF and LCM. The concept was in no way above her head, and she was taught number families in 2nd grade. She graps multiplication, division and how they relate, and how to find number families, but they have made a huge jump in the difficultly level and have not done GCF or LCM before. The LESSON was above thier heads in the way it tackled teaching them to find greatest common factor. It was a lot of number theory, concepts we discussed in discrete math in college, and NO concerte examples of what they were supoesd to be doing, and this is how common core wants it taught. I just don't think that it is going to get the concept across. It was not simple numbers like 78 or 200. We are talking problems like:
Find all factors of 543

or

What is the greatest common factor if 425 and 510.
they weren't shown how to do this. They discussed the theory behind it and how to estimate what the factors MIGHT be, but never how to find them or what greatest common factor or least common multiple even mean. The were meant to make that jump on thier own based on the lesson.

Our school system has always covered the first year of college calculus by the end of high school, and have AP and IB exam scores well ahead of the national average. It is not that they were not teaching the concepts or were behind. It is the WAY this stuff is being presented that is causing the problem. There is NO practice in class on any concepts, only at home. Class has become all abstract theory, no implementation, but they are required to implement the concept on homework and tests with no guidance.

 

[cheer25mom]

I apologize, I mispoke (mistyped?... whatever). She fully understood multiplication as a practical concept by the end of kindergarten and was demonstrating algabraic problem solving early in first grade. Shoot, I have an economics minor and still don't fully understand algabra. She's been using the everyday math program for 3 years now and I think its far better than how they taught me so many years ago.

There are things I like and things I don't like about common core. Beginning last year, my daughter's reading and math education are both done using a STAD type cooperative learning approach. I initially had serious concerns about this approach because she has my attention-deficiency and can come off-track easily. In the end, I came around. The method allows the teacher to focus attention on the kids who need the most help without holding back the students who better grasp the subject. It also builds interpersonal communication skills far better than sitting through a lecture would.

It seems to me that there is always a lot of resistance to change. But the common core initiative came forward to address a very real problem. Students were leaving public education without the skills needed to succeed in higher education, career training, or every day living and working.
IMO, common core doesn't fix this AT ALL. Until PARENTS step up and place importance on education it won't change, no matter what we are trying to teach in school. A child that doesn't care will still not care. A child is NOT going to leave school with those skills until they make some effort to get them, and that is what many are missing here. The reality of the situation is that everyone is not just sitting there waiting to learn, and upping the anty does nothing to fix that. Until we as a nation do something to address the apathy at home, no new curricilium is going to fix all our problems.
The idea that an employer can require a high school diploma and still get applicants who are functionally illiterate is appalling to me. Kids don't have a choice as to where they are born, the education they get is largely determined by the accident if their birth. Yet statistically speaking a kid born in Mississippi is going to get the short end of the education stick. A kid born in texas is going to get an education that took years of debate to decide that they should spend more time learning about Ronald Reagan than Alexander Hamilton. And still, graduation is not even a guarantee of literacy.
Not every child is college bound or even should be. You want successful adults? Emplement trade based education for those that need it, not college ready standards for everyone. Yes, kids that are capable should be getting higher order thinking skills, but what about they kid who is a great mechanic, but horrible at writing a history essay? He is getting the shaft here more than anyone else. Common core assumes everyone is the same and everyone is college capable. This is just not true. The kids that are headed for trade based careers are not getting what they need to be prepared.
I would encourage everyone to read what the common core standards suggest a kid know by the end of each grade, and formulate a disagreement if there is one. If not then the answer is to work with the school on implementation strategy.

I definitely disagree. I don't think its realistic to expect that everyone is college bound and should be thinking and functioning at that level by the end of high school. I think we would be better served tracking students based on ability and interest into college, ready, trade ready, and basic skills paths. Common core assumes everyone is headed for higher education.

 

[luv2sleep]

A lot of you are confusing Common Core Standards with the method of teaching being used in your district.

Common Core is a set of standards. That's it. A list of things a child must be able to know and do at the end of a certain grade level. It does come with things like a list of approved books, etc., but that's all Common Core is. In concept, it's no different than list of standards your state had last year or two years ago, etc.

What everyone here is having a problem with is the implementation of a curriculum used by your district to teach the Common Store Standards. That's a completely different kettle of fish.

For example, "cross teaching" is a concept going back to early 1990's (and earlier) and is not related to Common Core. Some districts might find using cross teaching is helpful so students can apply concepts from one class in another class (I certainly found Calculus made more sense when I was in Physics class). What jodifla is describing (teams of 4 students where each student has a role) is called cooperative learning, and this is a style that also existing before the Common Core Standards.

Here's a quote:

Please don't confuse the standards with your district's implementation. Some people don't like Common Core because of the amount of testing involved, or because they feel different states should have their own standards, or they think it's some kind of federal takeover. Whether those beliefs are fair is certainly up for debate. But what most of you are talking about isn't even about the actual standards.

Thank you for the clarification.

 

[DopeyDame]

There is too much confusion here. Seriously, read the standards for your child's grade. It lists what they should be learning, not how.

Math: http://www.corestandards.org/Math

E/Language Arts: http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy

Just wanted to repost this, since a lot of people don't seem to be taking the time to actually look at the links FlightlessDuck posted and understand the difference between the common core STANDARDS and the implementation your particular district may be using.

 

[Colleen27]

jodifly....that's 1st grade!!!????

I did that stuff in college!

I don't think there's anything wrong with teaching those things young. It actually saves a lot of time later, because you don't introduce (for example) the concept of democracy in conjunction with America's Founding Fathers - it is already a familiar concept from the Classical era so kids can recognize it being brought to the forefront again in the ideas of the Enlightenment. I don't homeschool any more, but when we did we used Story Of The World for history/social studies; it takes a chronological approach to history combined with repetition of the whole cycle so that kids start from the beginning but then revisit each era in more depth and critical thought when they're older.

There are a lot of problems with common core, not the least of which is the ridiculous emphasis on cooperative work and process above results in so many CC-compliant curriculum programs, but that shouldn't be confused with the chronological/narrative approach to teaching human history. Even now, with my kids all in school, we still get out those Story of the Word books (and E.D. Hirsch's "What Your <blank> Grader Needs to Know" series) for extra enrichment/challenge and rainy day discussions because the kids enjoy it.

 

[K and K's Mommy]

I should have been more specific, this lesson was GCF and LCM. The concept was in no way above her head, and she was taught number families in 2nd grade. She graps multiplication, division and how they relate, and how to find number families, but they have made a huge jump in the difficultly level and have not done GCF or LCM before. The LESSON was above thier heads in the way it tackled teaching them to find greatest common factor. It was a lot of number theory, concepts we discussed in discrete math in college, and NO concerte examples of what they were supoesd to be doing, and this is how common core wants it taught. I just don't think that it is going to get the concept across.

I agree with you that the lesson was bad, but that is either a teacher problem or an administration telling the teacher how to teach problem. The common core standard of 4th graders learning GCF and LCM is not bad.

FlightlessDuck - thanks for posting the standards. Many people in Indiana are up in arms and want to stop Common Core because of all the misconceptions that common core tells you exactly what to teach and how. There is nothing in the first grade standards about Mesopotamia. That must be one school district's take on HOW to teach it.

I've really only looked at the first grade standards. They are not that much different from the Indiana standards. Math is slightly harder.

The one thing that bugs me about the Common Core is the amount of money that will be spent on testing because everything needs to be redone. I'd much rather see money that actually helps the children - smaller class sizes, more books, more technology, teacher training for the new technology, etc.

 

[Colleen27]

This post is an excellent example of WHY Common Core is being implemented.

I hate to tell you, your 4th grader should have been taught number factors around 2nd grade. They call them "number families" but it's the same thing. The fact that you feel that this concept is "above your child's head" is the reason the Common Core standards have been implemented. While one kid might be learning "number families" (i.e. factors) in 1st or 2nd grade, another kid in another state has not been taught the same thing by 4th. That's the problem: Inconsistencies across states in grade level standards. Common Core is an attempt to level the playing field and introduce some consistency so that when kids move across state lines (as many, many do in their childhoods), or when they are ready to apply to college as HS Seniors, they ALL will have learned the same "core" set of skills, at the same grade levels.

But it is also an excellent example of the problems with it - it isn't being phased in from K or 1st grade, so that all students have the skills they need. It is being tossed out there without regard to any gaps that might exist between the old curriculum and the new, so to use this example 4th graders not only have to learn 4th grade math, they also have to learn all of the concepts that common core includes in younger grades that their old curriculum didn't teach... Frequently with little or no class time or instruction from their teachers on those concepts. And ready or not they'll be tested this year on their mastery of it all.

I actually think the common core concept has merit, but effective implementation would have seen it adopted immediately only in the youngest grades and phased in as those students progress or rolled out with "bridge" lessons for 3 grade and older. But that's not what I'm seeing around me. I'm seeing a mid-stream change in curriculum that is leaving a lot of kids lost and lacking the skills they need to master the new material being presented. The curriculum is written as though the kids have had a common core education from the start, and even though the whole supporting argument for this method is to avoid the gaps and inconsistencies of previous methods nothing is being done to fill in those gaps for existing students. And by doing it this way, there's a real risk that short-term results and test scores will deem the program a failure before any class of students has had the chance to experience it from start to finish.

 

[daughtersrus]

Common Core is another failure by those who support federal mandates.

Prior to the Department of Education being formed the US was #1 in the world in education. Far and away number 1.

Since then US schools have fallen to 26th place. Source

.

The US is also one of the few countries that educate all children including those with severe learning difficulties. The test scores for the majority of these students are also included.

I am not a teacher. Just a mom of a DD with significant disabilities as well as the mom of two DDs that are SpEd teachers.

 

[Planogirl]

There are other countries that educate all of their children but they might structure the education to fit the student's abilities. Whether this is appropriate or not is debatable of course.

 

[barkley]

curious-how are the 'groups' determined? by the teacher or the students? who determines who in the group has the ability to ask questions of the teacher (are 'positions' within the group assigned/up for grabs/rotated or fixed)?