2.9.21 Meet the New Math, Unlike the Old Math

Authors Tara Hempel and Megan Ruppel, KDM Teachers

How many times have you looked at your child’s math homework and thought to yourself, “what is this new math?” Many teachers are thinking the same way you are! But the truth is math concepts and skills are evolving each day. Children are being asked to think like mathematicians at a very young age.

10 to 20 years ago, when most of us were being taught math, we were expected to just memorize without a true understanding or knowledge of a problem. The “new” math expects children to visualize concepts and make connections. This helps them have a much better understanding of number relationships and ultimately retain more information.

We now allow students to explore topics with hands-on materials, pictures and they are exposed to a variety of strategies to solve any given problem. They use the strategies that work best for them.

Overall, "New Math" attempts to give students the way behind the concept, a variety of strategies and tools, and allows them to dig deep to develop life long understandings.

What can you do at home? Talk positively about math, understand that EVERYONE is a math person with this “new” math way of thinking. When your child is finding something difficult or they may be showing some frustration, encourage them to try and use a different strategy. Let them know that mistakes are OK and that is how we find the correct answer. Mistakes allow thinking to happen! It is ok to struggle, allow for wait time when they are working through a problem. Help them make connections and point out that math is all around them. Math is like any other subject and can be learned with hard work!

2.5.21 Power of Words & the Impact of Reading

Author: Vanessa Waxman, Instructional Technology Integration Coach for RTSD

Our time is valuable and often times it is also limited. We as parents and educators know this well. During these uncertain times as educators and parents ourselves, we are not asking you to become your child's teacher, rather we hope that you will join us as strategic partners to support our students in maximizing their potential and reinforcing learning at home. As you have read in the blog post about bridging the past and the present remember as we provided context and suggestions to look at the options like a breakfast buffet. Choose the things that you like and that you can do and above all don't stress. We are in this together.

Supporting your children to develop a love or at the very least an appreciation of literature will help your child succeed academically. Something not many realize is that academic knowledge that is needed for school doesn't come from lectures or watching various programs, but by embracing what they read. A great study on the use of rare words in books and in adult speech found something pretty amazing. The researchers found that children's books contained an average of 30.9 rare words per thousand, and comic books were even higher - 53.5 per thousand (Wiseman et al. 16-17). Bottom line... reading with your child regardless of who is reading is providing them with exposure to richer vocabulary and therefore knowledge.

So what resources do you have as families to support reading when it may not be easy to buy new books or visit the library?

https://www.getepic.com/sign-in - Many of your children's teachers may already be using this. Make sure you sign up so you can access extra time over out of school hours.
https://www.storylineonline.net/ - Listen to SAG members read beloved stories aloud and extend with extra content to support reading.
https://justbooksreadaloud.com/ - Pick a story and have your child listen to a story being read aloud and they can follow along if they have the book at home or on the screen.
http://mrsp.com/Default.aspx - Meet Mrs. P (Kathy Kinney), reads classic children's stories that have proven their value through the test of time.
https://storytimefromspace.com/ - What better way to listen to a story than by having it read to you by an astronaut floating in space!
https://www.uniteforliteracy.com/ - Provides free access to more than 400 original picture books, one-fourth of them written in Spanish. The digital books provide audio narrations in more than 40 languages, spoken by native speakers in warm, expressive voices.

2.2.21 Bridging Past and Present: New Twists on Old Concepts

Author: Stacey Wisniewski, Principal at KDM

While attending a webinar this month a school counselor from another district brought this to the attention of the small group I was working with. I thought to myself, wow, how is this the first time I am learning about this! I took a dive into the information about this and came across more similarities than I thought. Although we have made significant technological progress, the ideas for educating students when in person is not an option remains similar. I have gotten some similar questions from parents regarding how we are meeting the students where they are. This is a great question! How are we meeting the needs of students that have all different learning abilities, environments, technology access, and access to an adult for assistance? Similar to what they did in the ’40s, teachers have worked across grade levels and across the district to develop what we refer to as “power standards”, a subset of learning standards that educators have determined to be the highest priority or most important for students to learn. Teachers are focused on those standards during their instruction. The criteria to pick a power standard is evaluated against three thought processes:

This is a practice we do regardless of a pandemic, there is just an increased focus now as our time and environment with students has taken on a new structure. There is also a plan to target foundational skills through the use and help from technology and the development and implementation of well-researched platforms that work with students on the skills they may need more practice in that support those power standards.

Another similarity between our current circumstances and the Polio outbreak is the increased need for parent assistance to support what students are learning in school. In the hopes of not being redundant and not offering information, you have already heard and/or tried, here is a new twist on what strategies we may have already known about.

1.27.21 Why We Do What We Do...

Author: Patrick Higgins, Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum, Instruction, & Assessment for RTSD

One of my favorite writers in the education space is a man named Dan Meyer. Dan began his career as a math teacher in urban Los Angeles and found very predictable problems when it came to teaching algebra to 9th Graders. In his words, he described it as such: "I teach high school math. I sell a product to a market that doesn’t want it, but is forced by law to buy it."

So he began thinking deeply about the teaching of math and writing about his experiences as he reached students with his methods. I had the pleasure of meeting him in 2010 and hearing him speak about the idea of patient problem solving, meaning essentially that students are often presented with math problems that don't ask them to find new information, rather they are asked to just plug in numbers and find an answer. When, Meyer asked, as adults do we ever have problems to solve where we have all of the information we need to solve it?

Rarely, if ever.

That prolonged introduction leads us to where we are here in Rockaway today. We are beginning the process of developing ourselves as patient problem solvers both in our educators and in our students. As students enter our schools either as bright and eager Pre-K or Kindergarten students, as wide-eyed transfers in from other districts, or even as first-time students to a school in America, we must begin to learn about them. Taking our example from above, we cannot simply place students into a formula and find the right solution for their learning and development; we need to learn about them first: Who are they? What do they like? What thoughts do they have? What do they know? What can I teach them? Here at Rockaway Township Public schools, we are a learning organization, and our goal is first to learn as much about your child as we can so that we can provide a platform for them to stand on and a path for them to follow.

We use our universal screening assessments to find out where our students are currently learning at. In Math, we use i-Ready to analyze if our students have the prerequisite skills for the concepts they are about to learn, and if they don’t we design our learning around building those skills. In Reading, we use a series of assessments that measure phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and comprehension to show us what our students can do independently, and what exactly we need to teach them.

From this point, our teams of grade-level teachers, subject-area leaders, counselors, interventionists, and administrators begin the process of understanding what we can teach your child. It is from the conversations we have with them and the data we gather that we can truly understand our role in their education. And throughout this process, we want you, our parents and guardians, to be right there with us. This blog and this website will serve as a place you can go for resources and learn about methods you can try at home, but also for you to learn about why we do what we do in the classroom.

It is rare that we ever have all of the information we need to begin our work as educators, but here in Rockaway, we are developing our skills as patient problem solvers, and we are making sure we find out everything we need to know about our students.

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