Jamie L. Sirois - The Everything Parents Guide to Common Core Math Grades 6-8: Understand the New Math Standards to Help Your Child Learn and Succeed

Dear Reader,

As teachers we realize that once parents have students in a middle school setting, they often feel disconnected from the school and what their child is learning. Sure, some schools do a great job of keeping parents informed and involved, but other schools view this time as an opportunity for your child to gain a level of independence and learn the skills of self-advocacy. Regardless, it is important for you to know what standards and skills your child is expected to become proficient with, and how education is changing as a nation.

Math often suffers a negative stigma as being something that people are either good at or not good at. The truth is everybody is capable of some pretty terrific things if they apply themselves and have the necessary supports and tools in place. Only then can the strongest of the naysayers truly see math as the exciting subject that it is.

We hope this book helps you work through the core concepts of middle school math and allows you to gain insight to the changes of the Common Core Standards. If the math your child is learning doesnt come easy, that is okay, as it wasnt designed to. With a little bit of support and practice, everything is possible.

Jamie Sirois and Adam Wiggin

These handy, accessible books give you all you need to tackle a difficult project, gain a new hobby, comprehend a fascinating topic, prepare for an exam, or even brush up on something you learned back in school but have since forgotten.

You can choose to read an Everything book from cover to cover or just pick out the information you want from our four useful boxes: e-questions, e-facts, e-alerts, and e-ssentials. We give you everything you need to know on the subject, but throw in a lot of fun stuff along the way, too.

We now have more than 400 Everything books in print, spanning such wide-ranging categories as weddings, pregnancy, cooking, music instruction, foreign language, crafts, pets, New Age, and so much more. When youre done reading them all, you can finally say you know Everything!

PUBLISHER Karen Cooper

MANAGING EDITOR, EVERYTHING SERIES Lisa Laing

COPY CHIEF Casey Ebert

ASSISTANT PRODUCTION EDITOR Alex Guarco

ACQUISITIONS EDITOR Brett Palana-Shanahan

SENIOR DEVELOPMENT EDITOR Brett Palana-Shanahan

EVERYTHING SERIES COVER DESIGNER Erin Alexander

Visit the entire Everything series at www.everything.com

GOOD FOR YOU. You bought this book. You have proven yourself as being a concerned parent who wants to do everything you can to help your child succeed in middle-school math. Maybe you remember it as a dark time and you want your child to have a better experience. Maybe you were a rock star at math and want to make sure that your children follow in your footsteps. Either way youre getting involved, and parent involvement is one of the largest positive factors in a childs success in school.

However, things have changed significantly in the middle-school classroom in the past few years. You may remember having heard the twentiethcentury term new math. And thought to yourself, How can math be new? Its not. The math has not changed at all. What has changed is the approach on how the material is being delivered to the students from the teachers. New math was a nickname given to the paradigm shift when teachers got away from lecture-based, worksheet-riddled classrooms and put the onus on the student. The major focus is having students truly learn the materialto retain it, rather than just regurgitate it on the next test only to be forgotten shortly thereafter.

The unveiling of the Common Core State Standards is the most recent shift in the mathematics classroom (as well as in Language Arts). A heavy focus has been placed on the specific concepts that are taught at each grade level as well as the mathematical practices that should be incorporated into daily learning. Common Core State Standards are looking to improve both content and instruction in classrooms across the United States. For the states that have adopted the program, it provides a common layout of what students should know before proceeding to their next year. What a student is learning in one state is exactly what a student in a different state is learning. Theoretically, if a family were to move across the country in the middle of the school year, there should be a seamless transition for the school-aged children into their new classrooms.

This book will serve as a resource for both the math-loving as well as the math-fearing parent. It will be an aide, to not only become familiarized with the new sequencing of the curriculum, but also to learn how to extend your childs classroom into your home.

There is something to be said for practice through repetition. After all, Practice makes progress! However, this book will focus more on being proactive about the material. A student who knows what is coming before it arrives in the classroom will have a HUGE advantage over his or her peers. You will find an assortment of practice problems throughout this book but let it be known, by no means is this reference intended as a textbook. The sample questions will touch upon some of the most important and tricky concepts of middle-school math but it will not replace the totality of what students experience in middle school.

Thumb through the pages. Take a look at whats on the horizon. Do not try to learn it all at once. Remember, this represents three years worth of mathematics. When youre ready to delve into it a little deeper into the specifics, work alongside your childnot in isolation. They are the reason why you now own this book! Keep an open dialogue with him or her about what they are working on in class, what is going well, what isnt going well it is all part of that beneficial classroom extension. We hope that this book serves its purpose as a go-to during those conversations.

The Common Core State Standards are a set of national academic standards and instructional guidelines for schools to follow when teaching mathematics. They outline what a student should know and be able to do at the end of each particular grade level, but do not tell teachers how they should teach. The goal of the standards is to create a level playing field of information all students should learn at each grade level, no matter what state, no matter what school. For many years, states have been setting their own expectations of what students should know and be able to do, but when you try to evaluate how the nation ranks in education, the lack of consistent standards makes it almost impossible to compare. This chapter will provide you with an introduction to the Common Core State Standards and identify how this set of standards is intending to improve our educational system.

The purpose of the Common Core standards is to develop a set of common expectations and goals for all students. These standards are intended to prepare individuals for future success in life, in college, or in the workforce. If students are to be ready to compete for jobs, they need a set of clear, consistent, rigorous goals.