Just in time for Spring Break, here is a new post aimed at helping all of our stakeholders understand the Common Core Standards and Smarter Balanced Assessment (if you haven’t seen the other two, you can check them out in the archives). My goal is to provide you with information that will hopefully alleviate some of the anxiety that seems to be cropping up about what the CCSS will mean for students. One common myth I have heard recently is that the Common Core requires us to teach math skills (such as subtraction) in a new fangled, new age manner that looks pretty confusing to the average person. Keep in mind that the Common Core Standards are just standards – not instructional techniques. They give us guidance about the conceptual and skill based knowledge that students should have taken to a level of mastery within a grade level benchmark. They encourage critical thinking and discourse to discover multiple ways to solve problems – they do not prescribe one way to teach. Please know that we have been preparing for new standards for several years, and our teachers have done an amazing job of implementing appropriate instruction that addresses the changes to come.

The following link provides a list of Common Core myths and the facts behind them. Please read at your leisure. Enjoy!

Click here to read the article!