Key Shifts in Mathematics
- Focus: Learn more about fewer, key topics
- Coherence: Build skills within and across grades
- Rigor: Develop speed and accuracy
In math, instructional shifts focus on fewer, more central standards, building core understandings and linking mathematical concepts to real-world skills. In developing the shifts in mathematics, the designers of the standards moved away from what has been termed the “mile wide and inch deep” approach.
The Common Core Learning Standards for math stress the conceptual learning and understanding of key ideas and organizing principles of mathematics. The standards are designed to allow students to progress through math in a coherent way, building skills within and across grade levels.
The new math standards generate three major instructional shifts in focus, coherence and rigor. Adopted in 2010, these standards focus on the skills that students truly need to master at each grade level in order to succeed in subsequent grades. This means that there are fewer standards, but more teaching time for those standards that do remain. The standards are coherent both within a single grade and across grades. In other words, new concepts build upon previously learned concepts so that math topics are linked to one another.
The standards also clearly progress in difficulty from one grade to the next. Finally, the standards are rigorous because they support conceptual understanding, procedural skill and fluency, and application with equal intensity. Students with conceptual understanding see mathematics as something more than memorizing multiplication tables or using “tricks” to get a solution. They understand the actual mathematical process behind their work. With procedural skill and fluency, students perform math operations with speed and accuracy. Lastly, the Common Core requires that students apply their math knowledge to real world situations.
What Can Parents Do to Help Their Child?
Shift
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What Students Have to Do
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What Parents Can Do to Help
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Build skills across grade levels |
- Keep building on learning across grade levels
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- Be aware of what your child is able to do and how that will effect ongoing learning
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Learn more about less |
- Spend more time on fewer concepts and work toward mastery
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- Know what the priority work is for your child at their grade level
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Use math facts easily |
- Go more in-depth on each concept
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- Spend time with your child and work on the key areas they need
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Think fast and solve problems |
- Spend time practicing by doing lots of problems on the same idea in different ways
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- Ensure your child to know, understand, and memorize basic math facts
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Really know it.
Really do it. |
- Make the math work and understand why it does
- Talk about WHY the math works
- Prove that they know why and how the math works
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- Ask questions and review homework to see if your child understands the ‘why’ as well as the ‘what’ the answer is
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Use math in the real world |
- Apply math in real world situations
- Know which math skills to use for specific situations
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- Ask your child to do the math that comes up in daily life
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Common Core State Standards Math Resources
http://www.corestandards.org/
http://achievethecore.org/
http://isbe.net/common_core/default.htm
https://www.engageny.org/parent-and-family-resources
http://schools.nyc.gov/Academics/CommonCoreLibrary/ForFamilies/LearningAtHome/SLH_k8.htm
Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.