The Core at Home
Looking for more information on the Common Core?
- The National PTA has great parent brochures for K-5 in English and Spanish.
- NCTM has parent guides as well which include guides for helping your students with Math homework.
- The Council of Great Schools has road maps for parents in English and Spanish.
- Engage NY has parent guides to the core in English and Spanish as well as activities to do with families. There are videos for parents as well.
- North Carolina has produced excellent resources for families to solve problems at home.
Looking for more ways to develop math understanding at home?
LearnZillion has outstanding
3-5 minute video lessons for
3rd grade to high school.
You can search by topic or by the Common Core Standard.
Best of all,
all the resources are free!
Here are some of the ways you can use Learn Zillion.
1. To understand the standard -- Search LearnZillion.com on their Common Core Navigation Page to see if any lessons have been written for your focus standard. Once you click on a Grade level and Domain, it will zoom in to a page which lists each standard individually. If you see a file icon next to the standard, there is lesson set for that standard. If you click on the file icon, you will see all the lessons built to address that standard. What is awesome about this is that you can see how outstanding teachers from around the nation have "unpacked" the standard into a series of lessons. There is also a Coach's Commentary in which the teacher who wrote the unit explains the reasoning and background behind their instructional decisions. Parents can listen to all of these resources when you sign up for a free account.
2. To help with homework -- Many parents say that they struggle to help their students with their math homework. You can enter a code your child got from their classroom teacher or search for a lesson on your own. Your child can watch the lesson and then practice the lesson independently with the Guided Practice lesson which is provided. When my students watch the LZ lesson which matches my instruction at home, parents find it easier to assist with homework. There are even a few key standards which have the lessons available in Spanish!
Here's what my students said about using LearnZillion in our classroom this year:
3-5 minute video lessons for
3rd grade to high school.
You can search by topic or by the Common Core Standard.
Best of all,
all the resources are free!
Here are some of the ways you can use Learn Zillion.
1. To understand the standard -- Search LearnZillion.com on their Common Core Navigation Page to see if any lessons have been written for your focus standard. Once you click on a Grade level and Domain, it will zoom in to a page which lists each standard individually. If you see a file icon next to the standard, there is lesson set for that standard. If you click on the file icon, you will see all the lessons built to address that standard. What is awesome about this is that you can see how outstanding teachers from around the nation have "unpacked" the standard into a series of lessons. There is also a Coach's Commentary in which the teacher who wrote the unit explains the reasoning and background behind their instructional decisions. Parents can listen to all of these resources when you sign up for a free account.
2. To help with homework -- Many parents say that they struggle to help their students with their math homework. You can enter a code your child got from their classroom teacher or search for a lesson on your own. Your child can watch the lesson and then practice the lesson independently with the Guided Practice lesson which is provided. When my students watch the LZ lesson which matches my instruction at home, parents find it easier to assist with homework. There are even a few key standards which have the lessons available in Spanish!
Here's what my students said about using LearnZillion in our classroom this year:
- The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives offers free virtual manipulatives to help build understanding of key concepts.
- Check out this Pinterest page of Math Apps for iPad.
- IXl online has practice games for students (20 problems a day are free).
- Learning tasks you can do at home can be found at NRich.
- The Standards for Mathematical Practice describe how students need to think about the process of learning and applying math. Jordan School District has developed excellent posters detailing the standards for mathematical practice in kid language. They are available on their site. There's even a K-3 version in Spanish!
