To compete successfully in the 21st century and to participate fully as informed global citizens, students must have a deep level of mathematical reasoning and conceptual understanding. Rio School District teachers and administrators believe all students deserve a balanced approach to mathematics supporting their ability to: make sense of problems and persevere in solving problems, construct arguments to defend their reasoning, solve problems with accuracy and efficiency, and understand and model with mathematics.
Students will:
- Communicate their critical thinking
- Become effective problem solvers
- Demonstrate their understanding of mathematics through application in a variety of ways
- Approach mathematics in a balanced manner to develop critical thinking, problem solving, and computation
The Common Core Standards concentrates on a clear set of math skills and concepts. Students will learn concepts in a more organized way both during the school year and across grades. The standards encourage students to solve real-world problems.
UNDERSTANDING MATHEMATICS
These standards define what students should understand and be able to do in their study of mathematics. But asking a student to understand something also means asking a teacher to assess whether the student has understood it. But what does mathematical understanding look like? One way for teachers do that is to ask the student to justify, in a way that is appropriate to the student’s mathematical maturity, why a particular mathematical statement is true or where a mathematical rule comes from. Mathematical understanding and procedural skill are equally important, and both are assessable using mathematical tasks of sufficient richness.
