Here is our weekly run-down of triumphs and travails from the ongoing effort to help all American math students say, "I got it!"
Best wishes,
Lynne Munson
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The creators of Eureka Math have changed their name. Our name recently changed from Common Core, Inc. to Great Minds. Everything we are and everything we do is unchanged. Please look for us at greatminds.net, where commoncore.org now redirects. Our old name served us well for years but is now often a source of confusion. Our new name reminds us of what all children can become----Great Minds.
Eureka Math, charter schools, and the year of curricular reform. If the decisions the charter sector has made are any indicator, 2015 may be the year of curriculum-based reform, according to an article by the Fordham Institute's Robert Pondiscio:
Nearly half of KIPP's schools have adopted Eureka Math, a CCSS-based math curriculum. And KIPP is working with [Great Minds], the non-profit that developed Eureka, to create a new K-8 English curriculum for KIPP schools that is designed to build student knowledge systematically through the use of high quality works of literature, nonfiction, and informational text. This objective is required by the standards, but few English curricula actually attempt it.
An especially encouraging development: [Great Minds] is writing the curriculum for KIPP, but Munson says that her organization... will publish it, making it available for use to any school or district.
More and more reform-minded curriculum directors, math coaches, and others are finding support for their efforts to make curriculum decisions that best suit teachers and students. Read the full article here.
 Louisiana teacher talks Eureka Math. "Kids need more than one strategy for solving problems and then they can pick which one makes the most sense to them," says 5th grade math teacher Sarah Jolly of Alexandria, Louisiana. "In everything else (writing, reading, etc.), you're giving kids multiple strategies. You should do that with math too. Eureka helps with that. This makes math more meaningful too and more relevant to life."
 Case studies. "I actually found [Eureka Math] to be wonderful in how it explains the deeper concepts we want children to learn in math," says instructional coach Amanda Perry of Caddo Parish, Louisiana. "My students really began to understand the math behind the math. It took a little while, but they got there." Read a Q and A with Perry, and check back in for regular interviews with educators who have seen Eureka Math at work for their students.
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Have something to share? Please email me at lmunson@greatminds.net.
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