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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
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They're teaching this in grade six?  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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No one said it made sense
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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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
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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.
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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
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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/[^]
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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.
School of one NYC[^]
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Marc Clifton wrote: Every teacher I've talked with hates this system, but what do you expect from a curriculum that was decided in a national conference
I think that's a large part of it. Teachers hate it and students will also as it is incorporated, but this is the way to force more national standards -- central control -- upon every little city out there. Plus this way we can teach all the children to pull the same levers. "I hear and and obey..."  No need for thinking, that's for the smart people.
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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
40 - 25 = 15
300 - 15 = 285
285 + 2 = 287
Maybe 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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Hmmmm... 38 - 25 = 13 , and 100 - 13 = 87 , so 287 .
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I'd do 300 - (38 - 25) without even thinking about it.
The common core method is not something that should be taught. It is something that should be learned via the ah-hah moments that occur inside your head when you get a good handle on arithmetic. If you understand numbers, the tricky methods will come naturally.
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Well of course. But for me 38 - 25 takes more effort than fiddling the numbers in my head, either by adding or subtracting to reach easier to work with numbers, or breaking it down into smaller sums, for example ((30-20) + (8-5)) (although that requires me to remember more numbers at a time).
If I had to do mental arithmetic more than few times a month (beyond counting change) than perhaps I'd have an easier time with it.
I'd also like to point out that I don't sit there and think "Perhaps if I add two or three here, and then..." the route to the answer comes without much thought.
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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[^]
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I can't watch YT videos at work... oh the tease! 
Jeremy Falcon
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I think they are trying to bring back magic in our cold dry intellectual world! 
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I think that is stupid way to do math. Sorry, but that is how I feel.
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No need to apologize man. I like the premise personally, I just don't particularly see how the implementation is good.
Jeremy Falcon
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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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How about I use a calculator, and don't call you. 
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If you need a calculator for that, you should call a private arithmetic tutor.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I honestly just looked at the long number and started typing.
My point was that if the numbers/maths are complex then use a f***ing calculator. Move out, draw fire. No need for this bizarre, bullshit way of doing arithmetic.
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Um...you probably should have chosen a more difficult problem. :p
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That's the point.
Using the common-core-counting method, it would take forever!
Not using the common-core-counting method, it takes as long as it takes to see what the last digit of the number is.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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string s = "472326598458412365452131236525897456321452453698736985215457" ;
int i = s.IndexOf ( "7" ) ;
s = s.SubString ( s , 0 , i ) + s.SubString ( s , i+1 ) ;
(Or something like that.)
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