Schools’ family math nights play up Common Core pluses

Parents persevered through the political swirl. But for many, criticism of Common Core comes down to how the heck can anyone help kids with their homework!

For generations taught math was all about lining up the numbers and tallying the answers, this new system of breaking everything down into 10s and 1s seems like a lot of busywork and bother.

Those weird drawings – the ten-frame, the tape diagram and a bunch of dots instead of numbers for a multiplication table – what were they thinking?

“I'm so stressed by this math!” said grandmother Diana Reyes at a Stanislaus Union Common Core Math Night held in October. “We didn't do math like this in my day. It doesn't make sense to me.”

Besides its math nights, the Stanislaus Union School District in north Modesto created a list of links to help parents, including information for English learners.

Some schools sent home Cliff Notes versions of math sections to help folks decipher the ciphering. Oakdale Joint Unified School District put theirs online. Modesto City Schools created a page of grade-organized homework helps.

“We have to help parents understand that shift. There’s more than one way to solve a problem. You can help our children see math in many different ways, to see numbers in many different ways, so they’re able to reason things out,” said Jaime Garner, a math and science consultant with the Stanislaus County Office of Education.

Aspire Summit Charter Academy, a charter school on the cusp of Ceres in south Modesto, held math night in February. Not every parent said they had come around to liking the new methods, but all took time out of their evening to play math games and puzzles with their excited children.

Claudia Mendoza smiled as son Diego Mendoza, a second-grader, snapped blocks into a pattern creating a three-dimensional cube. “They like the games,” she said as she helped 2-year-old Violetta snap together counting blocks. Across the table, 5-year-old Jose Mendoza followed a diagram to create a colorful shape.

At another table, David Shively only shook his head when asked how homework was going, but joined daughter Addison, a kindergartner at Summit, placing colored circles to travel across of paper game board.

The Chastai family, meanwhile, were doing counting games. Dad Peter Chastai helped first-grader Addison color angles, while third-grader Zachary worked on figuring the number up and across of a cluster of squares. Common Core math seems to be more practical, Chastai said, and his kids are doing well.

Summit had more than games, however. Leanna Baker of the California Mathematics Council gave parents a pep talk on why Common Core was worth the work.

“Our goal in Common Core is for students to become good problem-solvers,” Baker told parents, explaining the advantages as children continued to play.

She urged parents to check out the math council website, http://cmc-math.org, for games, Math at Home guides in English and Spanish, math activities for very young children and a page of links to parent resources.

The National PTA has developed grade-by-grade explanations of Common Core math and English. Find them and other family-friendly resources at the California State PTA website, www.capta.org – click on Focus Areas, education.

This story was originally published March 17, 2016 at 9:35 PM with the headline "Schools’ family math nights play up Common Core pluses."