Common Core

Not Sure if this was posted before, or the right place to post it. But this is an example of how math is taught now.

www.youtube.com...

Looks ultra intellegent.



Now for 9x6

"How to make math more confusing than it needs to be"

Seriously though, no one was actually taught to just 'memorize' what numbers fit together were they? There seem to be a lot of curriculum's that are trying to reinvent the way maths is taught despite there being many other aspects of general education which could and should be looked at first.

For example in Canada this has been implemented and has been, rightly so, met with fierce opposition.Discover y math!

I was usually ahead of the curve with math during my school years, especially in the early grades. I just told my teachers that i could see numbers.

Common Core is insane. Bill Gates is a proponent. Look at Microsoft operating systems. Need I say more?

In this assignment, seven-year-old kids in 2nd grade were told that they were wrong if they simply subtracted one number from another to find the correct answer. That's apparently not considered the "friendly" way to do math. Instead, they were told to add numbers to each number first, then subtract *those* numbers to get the right answer.

a reply to: roth1

To be honest, this is one of the most useful methods of mental math when it comes to base-10 system, especially when it comes to larger numbers ala 137+214=100+37+214=100+200+37+14=100+200+37+4+10=351. Some needs less steps, soe need more, I personally usually just add the 37+14 automatically, any adding/substracting calculation under 1000 comes in a few seconds.

The explanation might not be the best and a bit confusing, but in the end it helps a lot if one understands the method.

In my eyes, it is rather positive that such method is taught. There are so many different mental math tricks, which help doing faster calculations in one´s mind and this method is one of the most used of those. If one gains full understanding of the method, nearly any substraction/addition can be done without the need for calculator, as mentally one is able to do the calculation faster than when using the calculator.

I could write a long post on how Common Core is nothing but a ploy to dumb down the kids even further but I'll sum it up with my experience. I saw a video where a teacher basically stated as long as the problem was formatted correctly, it didn't matter whether the child got the right answer or not. I laughed and dismissed it as, like, no way, that's just stupid.

Until I talked to my own child's teacher when she started bringing home Common Core math problems and couldn't do them (and neither could myself or her father). The first few nights, after struggling to understand what the teacher was expecting, we taught her the traditional method of multiplying two digit numbers and had her turn the assignments in like that. Her teacher marked her homework with red pen and denied her credit for the assignments because she did not use the proper formating of the problems, even though each one showed the work and had the correct answers. Because she did not format the problems the Common Core way, they were wrong. Period.

I immediately set up a conference. I told the teacher that there was a serious problem if mom and dad can't even help their 4th grade child with their math homework and we needed solutions. She gave us teaching materials so we could learn the methods. (Which I still don't quite get!) The teacher, in no uncertain terms, stated that as long as the work was shown properly and the problems had the correct formats, my daughter would get full credit, whether or not the answers were correct.

A friend of mine's daughter went from having A's in math to failing and requiring after-school tutoring because her mom and dad couldn't help her.

So, yes, there is something VERY wrong with Common Core. I believe there's currently some action going on in my state to have it removed from the schools here. I know several states have either opted out or are in the process of opting out.


The way Common Core teaches the children is only the tip of the iceburg.

Here's a documentary folks can watch if they want to learn more.

Building The Machine

Yep... I was with you and started a thread on it last night...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

It's mind blowing!!

Her explanation sucks. From a young age I always used to add to 10 first then do the rest.

14+9 = Break the nine to get a 6 = 20 +3 = 23

7+6, 3 off the 6, 3 remaining = 13

IDK if that makes sense to people either, basically just adding to 10 first.

It's really not about 9+6 though. That's the start of the issue, but really just scratches the surface of the idea behind Common Core. The end game here is to mass-produce obedient workers that are just smart enough to be good employees.

What people need to understand, especially people with children in the American public school system, is that Common Core is not about the individual child, it's about taking a set of standards and applying them to every single student in the country. A boiler plate that every child will be taught by. Federally standardized testing that every child must pass and parents cannot opt them out of.

Our children are not robots, they are individual human beings with unique abilities and skills and each has their own way of learning. To try and say every child has to meet these standards and pass these tests in order to be "college and career ready" is ludicrous. Who knows best how our children need to learn? The government or us as parents?

The scariest part is that if you are in a school that has adopted Common Core, even home schooling will not get you out of it. The tests still have to be taken and passed.

a reply to: CoherentlyConfused

See? I tend to think like you, shown in the thread I linked to. Whether that's right or wrong... I've no clue at this exact moment. It doesn't seem quite right off the bat to me though.

Love your avi BTW!

It would be nice if this site included a search engine to see if things were posted and to search for good reading.a reply to: Kangaruex4Ewe

a reply to: roth1

Teaching math like this is fine for older children, I would start this in say 6th grade. Exceptional math students could have these concepts introduced at an earlier age, in the same way we encourage high level readers to challenge themselves.

The problem isn't the teaching it's the age that they are teaching this stuff at. Children need first to be proficient in what is called "Math Facts". Then we can start teaching them ways to simplify more complex problems.

They are simply pushing kids too fast. We need to put music and the arts back in our young children's minds.

The current curriculum is designed to make logic thinking drones for the corporations.

The enlightening skills, music and the arts are ignored. Social skills never even make the curriculum. What our children need in the earlier grades is a type of education that brings out imagination, free thinking, and highly adaptive social skills.

How can any people's who have placed money over teaching children the arts be considered civilized.

Artistic free thinkers stand against the corporation owned government. We the people keep allowing this.

a reply to: roth1

This was posted about last night:

Common Core Is Like A Hangover

She could have used better terminology than "anchor to the 10" and "decompose" but what she's doing is emphasizing a concept that is intuitive if you think about how you actually add in your head. You build up units of 10 and what's left goes in the 1's place.

When you add 129 + 43 mentally, you don't known the answer because you've memorized the results of adding every combination of 2 and 3 digit numbers. You're likely arriving at the answer by breaking it down into smaller, discrete addition operations. Probably something like: 120 + 40 = 160, 9 + 3 = 12, 160 + 12 = 172.

As I pointed out in the other thread, the same sort of "anchoring to the 10" (or 100 or 1000 or any other power of 10) is useful for multiplication.

Consider the multiplication of two numbers, such as 213 x 12, done in your head. Traditional long form multiplication teaches us to start with the numbers in the 1's place and work up, carrying digits, which is a pretty crappy way to do math mentally. The way I intuitively learned to do multiplication mentally was what I believe is called the "break apart method." It's much easier and imo natural, to work it out in your head by breaking it down into 3 multiplication problems and adding the results:

200 x 12 = 2400
10 x 12 = 120 (2400 + 120 = 2520)
3 x 12 = 36 (2520 + 36 = 2556)

Enter the box/grid/area method:

I believe since the late 90's, UK schools have been favoring the area method for multiplication and US schools started to use either that or the Lattice method (which is ancient). Of the two, my opinion is that the area method is much better at teaching the concept.

It may amaze some of you in the "Stupid Common Core HAR HAR HAR" camp to see some of the ways that other countries are teaching kids:

a reply to: theantediluvian

I think most people don't understand math enough to understand what is being taught.

I still believe you need to memorize math facts first, before teaching higher level thinking. This is the same as memorizing sight words in reading.

Many kids will fall behind if they don't memorize their math facts or sight words. You can't skip these basic steps, and they are pushing many kids to hard.

a reply to: Cabin

I have Dyscalculia and could not do math the traditional way because my brain would constantly change the way I see the numbers. So as I grew older I had to compensate for the Dyscalculia.

If I have to add multiple numbers, I still have to write them down and then add up the tens before adding the other numbers together. I still have problems with easy math functions like 8 + 7 + 9, I think it should be 24 because I have to add 9 + 9 because that is 18, but then subtract 1 to make it 17 and then add 7 to that. So I have to start with the high numbers first. But I have freakin' Dyscalculia!!!, this Common Core stuff just seems like they are forcing Dyscalculia onto the students, no wonder they aren't leaning correctly.

And then, because writing larger numbers, the math functions themselves get convoluted. I remember at a job where I had to count the pieces of work I did, and the numbers were large, I actually in the middle of the equation subtracted and added within the same equation, to the point my result was so terribly off that my foreman had to help me recount.

Even now, I have to still count on my fingers for simple math functions and forget about subtracting, because it doesn't work on fingers.

If I had Common Core in school, I probably would have gone insane. Even in the example on the video, I was lost completely.

Dycalculia

a reply to: theantediluvian


Ooooh, anchoring to the 10, yes, that's what I have to do because of Dyscalculia, but never in my head. I can and do that on paper though and it takes me a while.

Dycalculia sucks when playing UNO because people know I have it and are always cheating the score to make it look like I lost. That happens to me a lot.

a reply to: theantediluvian

You're stuck on the math. It's about the math but only to a point. It's the deeper, more far-reaching effects of common core that people are opposed to. If it was just about the math, I wouldn't be as opposed to it.

Of course kids need to learn math and learning multiple ways of coming to the correct answer is great. But that's not what is so wrong about Common Core.


Here's a big problem that I have with Common Core myself:

National Database

Every state that agreed to the Common Core in order to receive Race to the Top (RTTT) funding committed “to design, develop, and implement statewide P–20 [preschool through workforce] longitudinal data systems…”4 Data collection must follow the 12 criteria set down in the America COMPETES Act and record, among other things, student demographics, reasons that untested students were not tested, and student success in postsecondary education.5 The 23 states that did not receive RTTT grants but are part of one of the two assessment consortia are also committed to cataloging students from preschool through the workforce.6 In 2012, the U.S. Department of Labor announced $12 million in grants for states to build longitudinal databases linking workforce and education data.

So basically, if your kids are in a Common Core state, the federal government will collect data from them basically their whole life. It's interesting to see how Common Core states that nothing is federal, everything is done on a state level, yet in order to receive the money, they have to comply by the federal government's rules. So this effectively allows the federal government to control what schools do.

Then there's this bit (from the same source):

Earlier this year, the Department of Education unilaterally altered the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). FERPA formerly guaranteed that parents could access the data collected by schools concerning their children but barred schools from sharing this information with third parties.8 But the Department of Education has reshaped FERPA so that any government or private entity that the department says is evaluating an education program has access to students’ personally identifiable information.9 Notifying the students’ parents is no longer required. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy center focusing on civil liberty infringements, warned that this revision will expose “troves of sensitive, non-academic data.”10 Combined with the changes to FERPA, the implementation of the Common Core is unleashing what is arguably the most comprehensive tracking of citizens that America has ever seen

a reply to: CoherentlyConfused

They're coercing the school system by dropping sacks of money in front of them and saying "teach our way and you can have this".

The addition thing in the op video, I came up with that on my own when I was younger and did simple math. It works for simple things quickly. Throw some big numbers down and it just makes more sense to do it the "long" way instead of looking for a bunch of ridiculous friendly numbers.

Why does everything have to be "friendly", too? Damn this anti-bullying, sissify your children campaign as well. It's sickening.

a reply to: Bundy

Yes, but when you spend time drilling your math facts, that's another trove of "friendly" numbers you can use with the more complicated math later on. 9+6 is a basic math fact that could be memorized instead of making it into arcane calculus long after it should simply be second nature recall.

So practice the method, but spend more time memorizing the math fact.