Last week I shared a pic about our kinesthetic math.

I said I had a lot to say about that and that I’d share more later.

Yes, this should have been done all along. But let’s face it – it wasn’t. Not in a lot of classrooms. The way I try to explain common core to questioning
parents and colleagues is two-fold: First, it’s a spiraling staircase. If everyone (teacher and
student) does their job in each grade level, the concepts recap, reinforce and build. I don’t care if you call it Common Core, Spiraling Standards or Sparkling Smarts (I made that up – you’re welcome). Maintaining this “common” structure is essential to cohesive learning. It makes absolute sense. It also is VERY dependent upon the prior year’s teacher doing their job. We all know how difficult it can be when a colleague just refuses, declines, and or neglects to do what’s expected. So in the real world, “Sparkling Smarts” isn’t going to be ALL it would be if we were teaching in Utopia. But I feel it is a solid plan. On this point, I think most agree. And, honestly, many of us felt things worked that way LONG before “Common Core” was penned. Second,  learners are expected to have deeper understanding of REASONING not a pocket full of skimmed techniques and concepts.

TRULY smart people, the geniuses running around our planet, don’t just know HOW to do something – they know WHY you do it. They possess wisdom to think critically, deep knowledge and skill. As students, many of us learned “procedure over reasoning”. In other words, we were taught HOW to do something, but not why we do it. If the task is simple – that really isn’t a big deal. BUT, if the concept is difficult – this isn’t so great. I hated math in school and never understood why I had to do each step. I was never taught the reason – just the procedure. Can you imagine if “they” were still pushing whole word ONLY reading instruction? (For you youngsters – yep that was a “thing”. No phonics. No rules. Memorizing words only. It was not a good thing.) Last week I tested a few of my kids on some words we had previously practiced quite extensively and hoped they had mastered. One of the words I asked them to spell was TAKE. 8 of my 30 kiddos spelled the word TACK. Obviously they were not at a stage where they were able to apply the silent E rule on a spontaneous basis. When I asked them WHY the word they had written said tack and
not take most were all able to tell me there was “nothing there to tell the a to say its name” after taking a second look. So, I knew those kiddos were close to mastery. They had the reasoning… just a few more opportunities to apply this concept and it will be imbedded in their schema. For the others, more instruction on the WHY was needed. Just telling them “Take has a silent e at the end.” would never have been enough to truly cement the knowledge of when to apply the silent e phonic rule. So digging deep into the phonic rule and the *job* of silent e was a big part of guided reading for these kiddos. I don’t think you will find anyone who argues this type of teaching. No one is making nasty graphics calling phonetic rules the “NEW READING”.

Well… I guess I am… but that’s not that point. 😉 What the Debbie Downers and Negative Nancys are missing is that the “new math” isn’t NEW – it’s an enforcement of deeper understanding that has been side stepped in many classrooms. It also isn’t what students are expected to do on a daily, living my life, paying my taxes, and balancing my checkbook ATM card basis. It is what is necessary to explain, support and define the absolutely vital WHY. This month our first graders started regrouping. Without extensive WHY lessons – first grade regrouping efforts look a lot like this…