Reality check: Middle school digs into much-misunderstood math

Middle school math has changed the most under Common Core, taking a pause in the push toward advanced courses to flesh out skills kids will need as consumers, sports fans and term paper writers.

Ratios, rates, statistics, proportions and probability, all common stumbling blocks for adults, fall in the middle math sequence. Dividing and multiplying fractions, algebraic equations and irrational numbers also fall in the middle school mix as Common Core moves into integrated math.

Like the fourth grade shift from learning to read, to reading to learn, in sixth grade the focus in math changes from learning the basics to applying them.

“There is a common myth about Common Core that we don’t care if they get the right answer. We do care about the right answers, but we also care about the understanding,” said Theresa Foote, math teacher at Roosevelt Junior High in Modesto.

In Foote’s high-energy class, there is no downtime. “I teach bell to bell. There is no, ‘You have 15 minutes before the bell’ – that’s the dead method,” she said before launching a class discussion on the next phase of an exercise in finding the rate of change.

The first problem of the type gets a long look. The second task kids will hopefully move through more quickly, having learned from the first. By the third, the stragglers should have caught up and everyone should be ready to work that night’s homework – which is just a few problems and never on Fridays in Foote’s class.

“We don’t cover a ton. We cover it more thoroughly. The idea is they really understand what they’re doing instead of drill and kill,” she said.

Students make notes and draw lines showing the dependent variable (the y value), and independent variable (the x) in different colors on a two-dimensional axis, then glue their finished work into a backpack notebook.

“They’re very visual at this age, so we work on these interactive notebooks. It kind of gives them a reference if they get stuck at home,” Foote said.

“I really do enjoy the Common Core because all kids participate,” she said, which in a class sprinkled with new immigrants learning English and special education students is no small feat. All have to explain their thinking in complete sentences, though they can get help on a missing word from a neighbor.

“There’s more time on a problem, but when they come back on Monday, the have it. They retain it,” said Foote, who has three decades of teaching experience under her belt.

Her class is still adjusting to the idea that talking in class is a good thing, and she is adjusting too, Foote said. “ I am more of a facilitator. It was very tough to relinquish (taking the lead). The knowledge shift – I used to do the work for them.”

While Foote works her class in Modesto through rate of change, 27 miles to the south fourth-year teacher Brenda Lucatero has her class at Livingston Middle School moving shapes on the x-y axis.

Math words organize the eighth-graders’ drawings as showing reflection, rotation, dilation and translation, which students explain as the everything else category.

“We have to learn it first, then we write about it,” said Keven Flores.

“It’s harder,” said Shawn Williams II.

“But it’ll get easier,” said Israel Gonzales.

“I like it better either way, as long as I get to learn,” summed up Nikole Cardenas, who hopes to pursue music or math as a career.

Learning about moving shapes on an axis came with video clips of computer animators, who use the math every day, and clips of a ferris wheel rotating and reflections on water. “I try to incorporate real-world examples,” Lucatero said. “I want them to see it’s not only just numbers.”

Lucatero has taught using Common Core methods for all but her first year, and said she likes it better than the old way. “There were so many problems and so very – do this, this, this,” she said, adding she likes how Common Core mixes old and new skills.

“I think math is better as an integrated model,” she said. Plus, as a new teacher she appreciates the raft of free, online resources for Common Core, and the professional development provided by her district and the Merced County Office of Education.

“We’re having a lot of support,” she said.

This story was originally published March 17, 2016 at 10:09 PM with the headline "Reality check: Middle school digs into much-misunderstood math."