Common Core Math (CCM) Practice Standards

Opinion

When I decided to use CCM as our structure, I considered two related questions

what doors will open for your children if they learn these standards?  And,

what doors will close for them if they do not?

“Forty-three states, the District of Columbia, four territories, and the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) have adopted the CCM State Standards” (you may wish to refer to the CC Web-Site, which we will use as a reference throughout the blog). Thus, I expect CCM to be with us for some time. If that time is 10 or 15 years or more, your children are likely to be out of school before CCM changes or disappears. Assuming that the standards enable learning math, I expect that students who learn the standards will have these advantages over students who do not: first, they will understand math and be comfortable solving math problems; second, they will to be able to apply their math skills to so-called “STEM” classes (more about STEM later); and third, they are likely to have an edge when applying for college and succeeding in college-level math classes.

CCM Lesson of the day: the set of 8 CSM Practice Standards

1 Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.

2 Reason abstractly and quantitatively.

3 Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.

4 Model with mathematics.

5 Use appropriate tools strategically.

6 Attend to precision.

7 Look for and make use of structure.

8 Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

These standards, from CC State Standards Initiative web-site are quoted directly above. While I see nothing inherently wrong with these practices, they are sufficiently vague to be of limited use to parents. Moreover, while the depiction of mathematically proficient students may offer insights to some teachers, it is of limited use to parents. The standards go beyond solving problems but are vague regarding how to solve problems. We shall clarify in the next few posts.

Definition

Model: As used in practice standard 4, model means to construct a picture, formula, equation, or relation that describes, at least partially, a behavior or activity.

Examples

For example, suppose I want to approximate the height of a very tall Pine Tree. Since I am not capable of climbing the tree, I might want to build a model of my problem using a triangle. What would this look like and how would it be useful?