Digging Deeper - Common Core

This week my students were working on a word problem in their math practice book. The problem was about guinea pigs and how much food they would consume in one week. This is an example of one of those “real world” problems that students need to work through in class or on assessments. The difficulty that my students encountered with the word problem was that they had no idea what a guinea pig is nor what pellets are. This goes back to comments made in the readings about experiences that students have with the real world.  My students were stuck on the problem because they did not know what it was talking about. In our culture we try to get rid of rodents, not bring them in to our home. So my students were at a disadvantage with this problem when trying to show what they knew in regards to multiplication and division because they have not been exposed to guinea pigs.

And it wasn't even a multi-step problem. These eight year olds have a tough time working out multi-step problems. No matter how much we work on them together, when they are on their own the majority will tell me that they don’t get it. Are they not at that developmental level where they are capable of working through multi-step problems? I think maybe not. These eight year olds are probably not developmentally ready for the Smarter Balance.

On a positive note though, today when working in groups the students’ task was to use any of the strategies learned to solve a division problem and explain it to their peers. I was very proud of them when every group was able to present to their peers their division problem and explain which strategy they used and why. At the beginning of this school year my students could not explain their thinking. It has taken time and practice for them to get to where they are now.