Helping Parents Make Sense of Common Core Math
Last year we decided to give presentations to parents to help them become more familiar with the Common Core standards and the Math their children are doing. We decided to focus on Grades 2 and 4, because that’s where the most serious misunderstandings seemed to be. The Grade 2 presentation centered on place value, addition, and subtraction.
The pictures at left will be familiar to any Grade 2 or 3 teacher. We did not attempt to give a comprehensive summary of Common Core standards, practices, or conceptual underpinnings. We zeroed in on representing numbers with Base 10 Blocks, standard form, expanded form, and using those different representations to help with adding and subtracting.
The outline that I spoke from, the handouts given to parents (quite similar to the outline), and the Smart Notebook presentation file are all available for download below. None of these is in any way a formal presentation, so please don't expect too much.
The presentations were not well attended, but we had some inquisitive parents who weren’t afraid to ask questions. We’ll try again this year and with better publicity we’re hoping for bigger audiences.
Download the Grade 2 CCSS presentation outline (PDF)