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Parents brush up on students’ math at Rosemont Middle School

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More than 100 parents arrived at Rosemont Middle School on Tuesday evening, but they weren’t there for a run-of-the mill parent meeting. They were there to do math.

The evening was the fourth session Glendale school officials have hosted as a way for Glendale math teachers to introduce parents to Common Core standards, by teaching them the concepts their children are learning.

After listening to a brief summary of why Common Core math is different than what the parents were used to when they were students themselves, the parents split up into different classrooms, separated by grade level.

One of the greatest differences is that students are not encouraged to simply memorize math to become a “competent calculator,” as Glendale math coach Matt Hamo put it, but they are pushed to attain “computational fluency” — the ability to solve problems with creativity and flexibility.

“We’re not trying to fill them with facts. We’re trying to help them think,” Hamo said.

In Traci Taylor’s class, parents learned about some of the foundational tools third-graders are being taught, such as using physical blocks to add numbers, and drawing blocks, lines and squares on paper to represent numbers as they solve addition problems.

Although Taylor said certain tasks at the third-grade level may appear simple, they are not without purpose.

“It seems simple, but for so long, we’ve been giving kids numbers without meaning,” Taylor said. “That’s what Common Core’s done. It’s built the foundation and given them the time to learn what numbers mean.”

Parent Sarita Murillo later sat in on Hamo’s class, where he was teaching parents sixth-grade math and asked them how they would solve the area and perimeter of pieces of paper he had asked them to cut in squares and rectangles.

Murillo said she is already embracing Common Core math for its objective.

“It is moving forward in education. They want these concepts to be fluent for the kids, not only to memorize it, and be able to solve it on a piece of paper, and that’s it. I think that is great, because I think that’s what we need. I think that is progress,” she said.

Fellow parent Lisa Schellenbach also sat in on Hamo’s class, along with her husband, Steve, who often helps their sixth-grade son with math assignments at home.

“This was good for me to understand that they’re allowing kids to approach a problem from their own perspective. There’s not just one way to arrive at an answer,” Lisa Schellenbach said. “It made me feel a little better about the Common Core curriculum.”

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Kelly Corrigan, kelly.corrigan@latimes.com

Twitter: @kellymcorrigan

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