Kid: "Are we learning any Common Core this year?"
Me: "Absolutely, everything we're learning is based on Common Core standards."
Kid: "Oh. Well my mom says Common Core is a load of junk."
Me: "Oh? If she has any questions or concerns about what you're learning this year, tell her she can give me a call. I want her to be very comfortable with what her son is doing in school." How about you? Do you feel like you've learned anything new this year?"
Kid: "Nope."
Me: "Well, did you know how to make compound sentence before 4th grade?"
Kid: "No."
Me: "What about the patterns we've been identifying in math? Did you see those before 4th grade?"
Kid: "Well, no."
Me: "Both of those come from the Common Core standard. It seems you have learned something from those standards, right?"
Kid: " No. They are just a load of junk."
I guess you can't fight genetics.
4 comments:
Such a fun example of how children learn from imitating models!
Btw, your blog is a comfort amid-st the serious discussions that clutter cyber sphere.
Thank you for the kind words!
This cracked me up. I'm a a new English/Language arts teacher and I have to admit I'm kind of on board with the ELA standards, but I know very little about the math ones. Your thoughts on them? I'm very curious because I've heard a lot of gripe about the math Common Core.
My thoughts? I'm very comfortable with this new direction we're taking in education. I don't see CCSS as a replacement for what we did, but instead an enhancement of what we did. I still teach the kids how to solve math problems just like I used to, however now I spend a great deal of time teaching, and more importantly, letting them explore why all these tricks and steps we teach them (like regrouping in addition and borrowing in subtraction) are necessary. It was a wonderful moment when one of my very good math student realized, while using base ten blocks instead of paper and pencil, exactly WHY we regroup in addition. She felt like I just let her in on a secret. I already see the growth in my students and see fewer mistakes in their math work and that may well be attributed to the deeper understanding they are developing. So, in short, I'm a fan. :-)
And thank you for asking!
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