{"id":21773,"date":"2024-01-30T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-30T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nwea.org\/blog\/?p=21773"},"modified":"2024-08-20T14:53:13","modified_gmt":"2024-08-20T21:53:13","slug":"thats-not-how-i-learned-it-4-ways-to-help-your-child-with-new-math","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nwea.org\/blog\/2024\/thats-not-how-i-learned-it-4-ways-to-help-your-child-with-new-math\/","title":{"rendered":"That\u2019s not how I learned it! 4 ways to help your child with \u201cnew math\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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If you are on social media at all, at some point you\u2019ve probably come across a post, or more likely a repost, of someone complaining about \u201cnew math\u201d or, rather, the new ways of doing math. These posts range from humorous to vitriolic, but regardless of the tone, they represent a consistent pushback from parents on new approaches to math brought about by the adoption of Common Core and other college-and-career ready standards. The main complaints typically fall into one of several categories: these new ways of doing math are too laborious and make no sense, I have no idea how to help my kid, and what was wrong with the old way of doing things?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ironically, what may underlie some of this pushback could be the best argument for why we need new approaches to teaching and learning math. I have often wondered about the intersection of those who advocate for teaching math the \u201cold way\u201d and the large proportion of people who are quick to proclaim that they are \u201cnot a math person<\/a>.\u201d This, coupled with studies<\/a> that show 93% of US adults express some level of math anxiety<\/a>, would argue that we very much need to learn math differently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of us learned math as a set of rote procedures to memorize and follow without thinking, typically to solve a batch of nearly identical problems. For those of us who struggled either with the initial memorization or with recalling the procedure a month after the test, new ways of thinking about math might help us actually see ourselves as a math person, which research shows all of us are<\/a>. The goal of current math standards is to help students develop a deep sense of numbers, which supports understanding why<\/em> various procedures work and gives students a toolkit of multiple ways to approach a task depending upon the specifics of a problem, the numbers involved, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what\u2019s new?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s look at some simple examples to show why knowing more than one way to approach a math problem can be more efficient. Say you needed to find how many years there are between 1999 and 1950. Using the standard procedure, you would likely line the numbers up, subtract the ones (9 – 0) and then the tens (9 – 5), moving left until you had subtracted all the place values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In this example, the math is straightforward. There is no need to decompose a larger unit into a smaller one, that is, you don\u2019t need to regroup or borrow. You can simply subtract each place value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now let\u2019s imagine you wanted to find how many years there are between 2024 and 1786. This gets a little more complex if you use the traditional approach. Take a moment to work through the problem the way you were taught. Most likely you lined the numbers up as in the example above and the result looked something like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Because the digits in the ones, tens, and hundreds places in the bottom number were greater than the digits in the ones, tens, and hundreds places of the top number, you had to regroup or borrow multiple times, resulting in a lot of crossing out and rewriting of numbers above the original problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the approach; however, many of us were taught it as a process without really understanding the why of it all. When we regrouped the two-thousands place, changing the two into a one and writing a 10 over the hundreds place, what did that mean? Were we really understanding that one thousand is the same as 10 hundreds? A key goal of new ways of teaching math is to have students understand what they are doing when they do use this traditional approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than one way<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Even when you understand the approach, the traditional method isn\u2019t the only way, and it may not always the most efficient way to solve a problem, depending upon the numbers involved. Modern standards work toward helping students become fluent with numbers and mathematics. Being fluent means more than getting the correct answer quickly<\/a>. Fluency is about \u201cthinking about mathematical procedures with efficiency, accuracy, flexibility, and appropriateness.\u201d <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, if we go back to our problem of finding 2024 – 1786, we can see there are approaches that might be more efficient than the traditional approach. For example, you might realize that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n