Mathematics

Assisting our kids with common core math is challenging since it's more complicated and time consuming than the math instruction that we received as students.  Also, students who are great at memorized math facts may struggle with math reasoning and conceptual understanding.  MWE recognizes these difficulties and is working with a math instructional consultant, as well as participating in a book study to help us incorporate the common core math standards in our daily lessons.

A major difference of common core math is because there are 2 sets of standards:  (1) the grade level content standard and (2) the mathematical practices.  Mathematical practices require a higher-level of math comprehension, and moves away from the memorization of facts and formulas to find the correct answer.  These practices require students, teachers and parents to reason, apply, connect and truly understand math concepts and skills.  

The 8 Mathematical Practices Standards for all K-12 Students are as Follows:

1. Make Sense of Problems and Persevere in Solving them
2. Reason Abstractly and Quantitatively
3. Construct Viable Arguments and Critique the Reasoning of Others
4. Model with Mathematics
5. Use Appropriate Tools Strategically
6. Attend to Precision
7. Look for and Make Use of Structure; and
8. Look for and Express Regularity in Repeated Reasoning. 

It is our goal that all of our students have a strong conceptual understanding of math concepts and skills in order to be fully proficient in common core math.