853.Resource, McNamara, Help-at-Home Math Guides: How to Gather a Round (Grades 3-8)

Introduction:

The purpose of these home-support guides is to try to remove some of the barriers to the teaching and learning of grade-school math and to present a selection of interesting topics in a sequential and engaging way.

As you have no doubt experienced yourself, going to the Internet to find specific information can be a frustrating experience- lots of blind alleys, ill-advised turns, and hours of wasted time and effort. And math can be intimidating all by itself- which means that the last thing you need in visiting the Internet is searching “The Cloud” for a cloud!

The approach here is simple- begin with a “Big Idea,” walk with it as it progresses from grade to grade, and supplement the trip with some of the best resources available. The fancy term for our walk is “vertical alignment,” but, by demystifying the Big Idea, you can actually start your own trip anywhere along the grade-level path- look back, move forward, or stick around a bit to gather specific and pre-screened information.

GA Standards of Excellence (GSE) in Math: Whenever one observes effective math teaching in actual practice, there are certain commonalities that reveal themselves across the K-12 spectrum. Among those is the planning and presentation of engaging lessons at every grade level highlighting three basic issues- 1) the what (content), the how (instruction), and the results (assessing that our students can grasp the content). And underlying each issue are the essential GA Standards of Excellence in Math: https://www.georgiastandards.org/Georgia-Standards/Pages/Math.aspx.

What can sometimes happen, however, is that, in the natural progression a student makes from grade to grade, math begins to resemble a series of unrelated rules that require memorization and not much else. There are, to be sure, important things one must remember- knowing the multiplication tables is one example- but developing critical thinking skills through the lens of the standards is even more important.

What’s Our Goal?: So, rather than move routinely from grade to grade, let’s take one “Big (Math) Idea” that runs through grades 3-8, watch it strengthen and deepen with spotlighted GSE’s, and then provide connections to some of the best tools so that you at home can follow as our Big Idea develops in step with your child’s understanding.