Inspiration

Classroom methods are changing; many of these changes in which, in my opinion, are not good.  

Now note that I am not a teacher and do not have any formal training in education besides a tutor certification course... so my awareness about this is only through word of mouth, examples brought in from students through my tutoring experiences, and a few that I have read online in passing by a short article catching my eye.  I know I could research more about this topic but also am aware of the bias that tends to go into articles about this (or really any) topic.

The Common Core was created with good intention to create a learning standard for students to help them prepare for their future.  One of the items on the agenda for mathematics was to have “greater focus on fewer topics”.  This limits their exposure to all of the math topics that I learned in school.  The larger problem from this, again based off of what I have seen, is that it further complicates the topics they ARE teaching.  

I have seen a few examples but one is the new method for teaching multiplication of larger numbers drawn out with a grid of boxes divided in half (“lattice multiplication”).  I spent about 5 minutes Googling how to use the method and was still a bit confused.  What happened to lining up the numbers to multiply and carry the tens digit - why add complicated steps?

      

Like I said, I think the intentions were good - to help provide a more visual way of learning for those that aren’t as natural learners with numbers.  However, I don’t think that’s the main problem - I think that there is one thing that could change the hatred towards math and that is an understanding of the methods to the real world.  Students constantly complain about never using the material they are learning, and although I can still make the argument that learning math is a brain-training process as well and through solving math problems you increase your ability to problem-solve in life….students don’t buy this explanation.  

They need understanding and connection from each topic to their own lives (or future lives).


source: http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/development-process/