Jessica Simpson

MATH 2010

Professor Diaz

9/13/2017

Common Core Essay

In teaching today common core and collaborative learning are both important. Part of

common core is that students need to be able work together by creating arguments and thinking

through the reasoning of the other students, and a great way to do this is in a group learning

environment. Both common core and collaborative learning are there to help improve student

achievement.

Common core is designed specifically to define what mathematics the children will need

to be ready for college and a career. It is made up of standards for mathematical practice which

include, making sense of problems and persevere in solving them, reasoning abstractly and

quantitatively, construction viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others, modeling with

mathematics, using appropriate tools strategically, attending to precision, looking for and making

use of structure, and looking for and expressing regularity in repeated reasoning. Collaborative

learning works in hand with the third standard, constructing viable arguments and critiquing the

reasoning of others. It is any setting where we have people that are getting together to solve a

problem and teachers can assign these groups based on factors that they see fit for the problem.

With collaborative learning the students are working together using the other common core

standards to find a solution, due to the fact that everyone thinks things through differently there
are sometimes disagreements or even ideas that need to be re thought out and reimagined.

Overall these two points work hand in hand.

I feel that thus far in the course all of the activities fit this perfectly, my mother who is a

tech at our local elementary school has even stated that a few of the activities that we have done

they have taught to their students as well. Take the first activity that we did in class, where we

need to come up with as many stair cases as we can with a certain number of blocks. This is

teaching standards 1, 4, 5, 7, and 8, and they are learning how to solve problems. Now I find that

they Polya method that we learned in class was something that I was already doing just in my

head not on paper so this four step process is how I would teach it to the students. First truly

understanding the problem, devising a plan, trying the plan, and then going over it again or

looking back at what worked or did not. Have the groups do all these steps together letting them

have a bit of a productive struggle to solve the problem, and then have them look back at what

they have done.

Common core and collaborative learning work hand in hand because collaborative

learning is getting students in groups to carry out the standards that common core wants to focus

on. The students get to work together something that in elementary school is great fun, and they

are learning together and debating the ways to solve problems. They are carrying out the steps to

solve problems and learning skills that will prepare them for the future which is what common

core is all about.