Common Core's epic fail: Special Education

[Anonymous]

Yes. It is a lot easier to make fruit salad and help a K kid "record" the recipe when you are working one on one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Not surprisingly it varied from kid to kid. I'm a special ed teacher, so some of my kids spent the entire year working on counting to 10.

So, you are not a K teacher. Figures.

I've taught inclusive classes with 24-25 kindergarteners, some of whom have disabilities, and many of whom don't. If that doesn't make me a Kindergarten teacher, I'm not sure what does. Again, what have you taught?

[Anonymous]

Taught K with more than 25 students and a part time aide. Also, taught first for a number of years. Never had less than 27 and class sizes were usually larger.

[Anonymous]

All my K kids had decent math skills and could read at the end of the school year--with a couple of exceptions for LD kids.

[Anonymous]

All my K kids also painted and played with blocks, etc. They had great critical thinking skills--but we didn't waste a lot of time on missing addend. It comes much more easily when they are older and is not a good use of time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes. It is a lot easier to make fruit salad and help a K kid "record" the recipe when you are working one on one.

True, I've also made fruit salad with my kid at home, and it was definitely easier. What is your point?

But this particular lesson is not particularly hard to teach in a classroom. If you notice, I didn't pick complex fruit. No cutting, for example.

You Maybe you have a kid staying in for recess due to allergies. If so, have him peel the oranges.

During center time, you set out bowls with 3 or 4 kinds of fruit. A bowl of blueberries, a bowl of red grapes, a bowl of green grapes, a bowl of separated orange segments.

You call over a group of 6 or so (aim to get through 4 groups). Have each kid pick 10 pieces of fruit. Yep, some will need help to count them some won't. (Hopefully, you've managed to teach at least some of your kids to count by January) Make your groups heterogenous so you aren't helping 6 kids at once. Line them up on a paper towel so that the same fruits are together (e.g. you have a 3 blueberries next to each other). Give kid a graphic organizer with the words "Fruit salad recipe" at the top, and 10 boxes down the side. Have them place it next to their line of fruit and draw the fruit that goes there. (e.g. count the blueberries, there are 3, draw blueberries in the first 3 boxes), then place the fruit in a paper cup. Send your more advanced kids back to the table to write the words and eat their salad (note: by "write" I mean RD GP for "red grapes" for the more advanced kids), keep lower group with you and help them write the first letters, then send them back to eat.

Call over another group of kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Taught K with more than 25 students and a part time aide. Also, taught first for a number of years. Never had less than 27 and class sizes were usually larger.

Standards? State?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All my K kids also painted and played with blocks, etc. They had great critical thinking skills--but we didn't waste a lot of time on missing addend. It comes much more easily when they are older and is not a good use of time.

Do you think the things that the Common Core took out of K, like patterns, and telling time, and coins, and random shapes, and counting by 5 were a better use of their time?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

"it's too much to expect young kids to think critically" - in other words, let's not expect too much thinking from our kids. The CC standards for K-2 for critical thinking is designed for kids in that age group. My 6 yr old DC can meet the standards designed for a 1st grader. Some of it is hard for DC, so we are working on it. But I think it's great that DC is learning to think critically earlier on than later.

I have seen no complaints about expecting young kids to think critically. I have seen complaints about expecting young kids to understand some math functions for which they are not ready. There is a big difference there.

It's also about thinking concretely as opposed to abstractly. Common Core push the demands for abstract thought down to ages where it's developmentally inappropriate. Young kids are concrete thinkers.

What about the standards for K-2 require abstract thinking? If I think about all the HW my 1st grade has had, they require concrete but critical thinking. Example, for math: John has 10 apples; Sue has 8 apples. How many apples are there in total? For writing: Is this a good title for the book...use examples and details from the book. Using details from the book is concrete, not abstract.

PP, in my experience, it's a waste of time to ask this question. The dialogue (if it is a dialogue) goes like this:

anti-CC poster: The Common Core is too wordy/easy/hard/abstract/inappropriate/unnecessary/time-wasting/bad.
poster who does not hate the CC: Could you give an example of a standard you find too wordy/easy/hard/abstract/inappropriate/unnecessary/time-wasting/bad?
anti-CC poster response #1: I'm not going to play your little games. Go look for yourself!
anti-CC poster response #2: You again?
anti-CC poster response #3: Go read other threads. There are plenty of examples.
anti-CC poster response #4: *links to an article about the Common Core that does not reference any standard*
anti-CC poster response #5: The specific standards are irrelevant, because the whole idea is bad to begin with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

As a teacher, I hear people say this a lot, and I just don't see it when I look at the Kindergarten standards. If anything, I think the standards do a better job of keeping things concrete before moving to the abstract, at least relative to standards I've taught before. Here are some ways I see the Kindergarten standards as more concrete relative to what came before. As a disclaimer, I've taught with the old DCPS and NCTM Kindergarten standards, and the MA based DC standards that replaced the old DCPS standards, and I've read the old MD standards, but have not taught them. Here's what I see in the CC.

1) They instruct that more than half of the time in a K class should be spent on concepts of number. They talk a lot about the use of concrete objects in set, and on applying counting skills to various contexts and arrangements of objects, rather than pictures on a worksheet. They specify that kids should be taught to match sets of objects as a comparison strategy.

2) They emphasize the use of small quantities that kids can master and wrap their minds around. For example, they only ask for fluency with adding and subtracting within 5. 5 is a natural stopping place for little ones, as it's both about the upper limit of what a child can subitize (recognize without counting) and the number of fingers on one hand. Any reference to numbers above 5, other than one standard related to rote counting, is clear that kids should be using objects or other concrete representations.

3) They stop the teaching of place value at 20, again allowing lots of very concrete work with just one set of 10.

4) They've taken out lots of what I'd consider rote learning, that kids struggled to make meaning of. Counting by 2's and 5's, recognizing coins, working with clocks, less common shapes like trapezoids, all of these have disappeared from the Kindergarten standards.

I've spent a great deal of time with the K standards, they are the standards that I know best. First grade is what I know second best. So, I'm open the idea that there might be some kind of unacceptable abstract leap in the 2nd grade standards.

I teach kindergarteners and agree with you, especially the bolded points. I think the new math standards make much more sense and are better for kids than the old math standards in MD at least.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Looking at the following standards, which explicitly break down counting with 1:1 correspondence, how would you say they are not appropriate for kids who start the year without 1:1 correspondence?

Count to tell the number of objects.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.CC.B.4
Understand the relationship between numbers and quantities; connect counting to cardinality.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.CC.B.4.A
When counting objects, say the number names in the standard order, pairing each object with one and only one number name and each number name with one and only one object.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.CC.B.4.B
Understand that the last number name said tells the number of objects counted. The number of objects is the same regardless of their arrangement or the order in which they were counted.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.CC.B.4.C
Understand that each successive number name refers to a quantity that is one larger.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.CC.B.5
Count to answer "how many?" questions about as many as 20 things arranged in a line, a rectangular array, or a circle, or as many as 10 things in a scattered configuration; given a number from 1-20, count out that
many objects.

These are excellent standards for the end of the year of Kindergarten, even if children enter without one to one correspondence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.OA.A.4
For any number from 1 to 9, find the number that makes 10 when added to the given number, e.g., by using objects or drawings, and record the answer with a drawing or equation.

This is a very difficult concept for K kids. Yes, it can be taught with lots of practice and effort, but time would be better spent on other topics.

I will agree with you that this is probably the hardest of all the K standards. Use of a ten frame would make it easier. But if a child doesn't yet know that 3 represents XXX and 7 represents XXXXXXX objects, trying to make groups of 10 will be meaningless.

It should be left till the end of the year; if students are having difficulty with more foundational skills they need to master those first.

[Anonymous]

These are excellent standards for the end of the year of Kindergarten, even if children enter without one to one correspondence.

You do know that is just the first part of the math standards for K? There are LOTS more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

These are excellent standards for the end of the year of Kindergarten, even if children enter without one to one correspondence.

You do know that is just the first part of the math standards for K? There are LOTS more.

Maybe you could provide one or two examples of kindergarten standards that you find developmentally inappropriate?

[Anonymous]

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.OA.A.4
For any number from 1 to 9, find the number that makes 10 when added to the given number, e.g., by using objects or drawings, and record the answer with a drawing or equation.

Inappropriate as a standard.