Pepper Bowins<\/p>\n
Elementary Math Instructional Leader
\nWaverley Elementary School
\nFrederick County<\/p>\n
As an elementary school math instructional leader in Maryland, I\u2019d like to help set the record straight about Common Core \u2013 which our state calls the College and Career Ready Standards.<\/p>\n
The Common Core is simply a set of curricular standards requiring teachers to teach concepts to a greater depth and to teach students how to think, reason, and justify their thoughts and reasoning using evidence.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not a new \u201cone-size-fits-all\u201d curriculum. In fact, in Maryland, we\u2019ve long had a single set of standards for everyone. We haven\u2019t had separate curricula for, say, learners of English, or students with special needs, or other subgroups.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a good idea to have one set of standards indicating what all<\/em> children should be learning within their grade. Imagine if your child moves to another state\u2014or a child from out-of-state moves into your child\u2019s class. Either way, wouldn\u2019t it be great if that child were not far behind, or way ahead, because each school taught to the same high expectations?<\/p>\n Think about it: If every school in every state, county, city, and district adopted the same commitment to meet the same rigorous standards, to teach the same deep, foundational understanding, wouldn\u2019t everybody benefit?<\/p>\n So what\u2019s different now, compared with other standards we\u2019ve used in the past?<\/p>\n I believe there are two main differences.<\/p>\n First, Maryland\u2019s College and Career Ready Standards focus on thinking about and critiquing the work of others, reasoning to solve real-world issues or problems, precision both in thoughts and words, as well as in calculations, and constructing viable arguments by justifying one\u2019s own reasoning.<\/p>\n Rarely have we taught students how to think and reason in the past because, honestly, we really didn\u2019t know what that looked like or how to do it.<\/p>\n Now we ourselves are learning how to do that through the inclusion of the Common Core Standards of Mathematical Practice and the information provided in the Progressions for the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics booklet. These resources have helped teachers understand the progressions of standards and strategies, as well as how to elicit reasoning.<\/p>\n Second, our new standards expect teachers to teach beyond the surface, so students have a deeper understanding of history and social studies, of scientific experiments, of how to develop one’s thoughts through writing and problem-solving.<\/p>\n In math, this means learning what\u2019s behind the algorithms so students learn how <\/em>and why <\/em>the procedures and steps work.<\/p>\n All of this depends on using rigorous content that requires all<\/em> students to engage in productive struggles at their own level — rather than being spoon-fed information by their teachers which they will later regurgitate for an assessment and forget soon after.<\/p>\n Don’t we want our children to be taught with the type of rigor that will give them more than a superficial understanding?<\/p>\n Don’t we want our children to be pushed to and beyond their potential so they can continue to grow in intellect and mental stamina?<\/p>\n So let\u2019s raise the bar.<\/p>\n I believe the Common Core and PARCC could be the catapult we need as a country to demonstrate our children are true competitors in the world of education rather than among the lowest in the ranking of education throughout the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pepper Bowins
\nElementary Math Instructional Leader
\nWaverley Elementary School
\nFrederick County
\nAs an elementary school math instructional leader in Maryland, I\u2019d like to help set the record straight about …Learn more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-mdclassroom"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":448,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions\/448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}