Christopher Danielson

As a parent, you’re most likely to encounter the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (Common Core Standards for short) in the homework that your child brings home. The Common Core Standards are a set of statements about what students should know and be able to do at each grade level from kindergarten through high school.

In addition to the content standards that state what students need to learn at each grade level, the Common Core Standards for Mathematical Practice describe how students should approach their mathematical work and what kinds of tasks teachers and curriculum should present to students. You can use the following list to keep track of the eight Common Core Standards for Mathematical Practice.

Math students add and multiply fractions in Common Core fifth grade. These skills require using and extending their knowledge of these operations from their earlier work with whole numbers. When adding two numbers, fifth graders need to express the same units. Three miles plus four gallons doesn't give you seven of anything because the units are different, which is true with adding fractions, too.

Sixth grade is the first time that Common Core math students start to solve problems using variables and the property of equivalence (specifically, the distributive property). They typically use variables that closely match the values they represent, so s for side length, v for volume, and so on. They also notice that some expressions — even though they may look quite different — always have the same values as each other, and they explore this property, called equivalence.

A lot of misinformation is available about the Common Core Standards. These standards guide the math your child learns in school each year. In order to advocate for and to support your child, you need to be well informed. Here are some important facts that counter some of the common myths about the Common Core Standards.

One important change in the Common Core Math Standards is that students are expected to work through multi-digit computations by thinking about number relationships before they’re expected to follow standard algorithms. For parents who never had to think about their computations in school, this can make homework time a bit daunting.

Place value is an important concept to know for Common Core math. The fact that it took thousands of years for humans to develop a place value number system is an important sign that place value is difficult for people to learn. The usual way of writing numbers is a place value number system. In other words, a limited set of symbols (called digits) builds numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, and so on up to 9) and you can write all numbers using these symbols.

States, districts, schools, and teachers have invested a lot of time, money, and effort implementing the Common Core Math Standards — to say nothing of parents. Before the Common Core, each state wrote its own standards for math. Now, nearly all states have agreed on the mathematics students will study in school.

You will want to make sure that your child is familiar with comparing logarithms for Common Core math. In addition to comparing numbers with ratio and unit rate, you can actually compare numbers a third way — with logarithms. A logarithm is basically an exponent. In the equation 10x = 100, writing log10(100) is how you solve for x; log is short for logarithm (in this case, x = 2).