Are the common core math standards developmentally appropriate for 1st graders?
My sister’s friend is a first grade teacher in a ‘challenging’ school in New York. People who know about education know that poor students often enter kindergarten, already a few years behind their more affluent peers. Good teachers, when given the freedom to teach their students at an appropriate level for their incoming skills, are able to help students progress.
But when teachers are forced, from a top down mandate, to teach an untested curriculum based on the concept that by adding more ‘rigor,’ students will rise to meet the new expectations, well, that can be a problem.
I have a vivid memory of being in first grade and having to answer some questions like : 5 + blank = 7. I would do these by counting up from 5 until I got to 7 and see how many I needed to count. My teacher, seeing that I was pretty good at this suggested that I could get the answer even more quickly by just doing 7 minus 5. I
But when teachers are forced, from a top down mandate, to teach an untested curriculum based on the concept that by adding more ‘rigor,’ students will rise to meet the new expectations, well, that can be a problem.
I have a vivid memory of being in first grade and having to answer some questions like : 5 + blank = 7. I would do these by counting up from 5 until I got to 7 and see how many I needed to count. My teacher, seeing that I was pretty good at this suggested that I could get the answer even more quickly by just doing 7 minus 5. I