Regular readers know that math and I get along about as well as oil and water, or perhaps open flames and gasoline. However, I do find it fascinating that the Common Core State Standards have what is called the “Standards for Mathematical Practice.” These are eight types of math expertise teachers should look for in…
Math
Surviving Math No-Man’s-Land
At the age of 44, I finally understand just how beautifully simple it is to figure out the area of a triangle. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I thought it wasn’t beautifully simple before. It’s that I didn’t know how to figure it out before. I’ve had to teach myself math. Yes, I…
The Common Core Pickle
Is there any better feeling than the one you get when, after struggling with a difficult or unusual task, someone says, “Hey, how are you doing?” Like when you’ve wrestled with a pickle jar, straining your wrist, feeling veins bulging on your forehead and disks bulging in your back, and you finally get that blasted…
Math at the Core
Okay, class, raise your hand if you’re implementing Common Core State Standards for Math this school year. Hmmmm, that’s an impressive show of hands. (I assume.) Here at The Mailbox, we’ve been keeping a close eye on the similarities and changes coming to the upper grades courtesy of Common Core. We’re aligning our upper grades…
Easing Parent Concerns Over Common Core
Last night I attended my youngest son’s first-grade open house. It was held in the school’s media center (what we used to call a library), not in the classrooms, and served as more of an explanation about the differences between kindergarten and first grade than a meet-and-greet. The open house introduced me to a first-grade…
What Is the Shape of Your Summer?
You know what I always wanted to do? Teach summer school. Despite the trials, tribulations, triumphs, and trickery of teaching an entire, standard-length school year, there was a sizable chunk of my addled brain that wanted to teach summer school. In fact, a few times I had constructed entire designs for a special summer academy…
The Language of Math
Obtuse and acute, am I right? I mean, median and mode. On average, I’d say I only get a fraction of the decimals divided and the remainder carry on. Maybe we should table this discussion before it multiplies out of control. The cardinal rule I am certain of when it comes to math literacy is…
More Math Excitement, Please
Something I noticed while looking at my calendar: There’s always a day or a week or a month devoted to books or literacy or something language-artsy. Sure, on March 14 (3.14) we had Pi Day. That was a tough one to explain to a lot of people, but it was mathematics-related nonetheless. It may be…
Clinging to the Lost Art?
While I was getting all misty-eyed about my years at Chapman Elementary School the other day, I stumbled across another interesting piece of debris in the jumbled, cobwebbed recesses of my memory. Sentence diagrams. There were a few diagrammed sentences sticking out of the boxes where my fourth and fifth grade remembrances are kept. Those…
Accurately Assessing Math Knowledge
There’s this one kid who always seems to be underfoot when I go home at the end of the day. Everyone claims he’s my youngest son. Even he claims it’s so. Who knows? I do seem to have quite a few memories of him being around since the moment he was born. I walk through…