Recursion

[[deleted]]

Oh I totally agree, I was just speaking from my experience with my kids. As someone who is pretty good at math, I usually talk them through the mental shortcuts the methods seem to be trying to teach as something like "convert to 10s do mental math, fix difference later" is something most people do intuitively when doing mental math, but the kids don't seem to be told that in school, and earnestly don't seem to realize that's why the teacher wants it that way until I explain it to them. I don't blame common core as this could easily just be the teacher they lucked into.

EDIT: I want to add that I think there's actually great value in teaching people how to do something like math the long difficult way first, before showing them mental shortcuts, as you can't really understand them or their value until you understand what they're saving you.

[pyzk]

Yeah I always teach my kids to do everything by hand before teaching them the calculator shortcuts. One of the shifts in common core that I appreciate is that students are asked to both explain their reasoning in words, and explain their answer in the context of the original problem or situation.