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Trust the Process: Fractions - the Real F Word


                                             Trust the process or Trust not! There is no try! - Yoda | Meme ...

I know it's not exactly the most comforting advice to adults who have been through a lot of change, but 1 thing I know for sure is that no school, no teacher, no administrator, no aide wants any child to be poorly educated.  Instead those teachers, administrators, aides, and school officials all know that there is a building process from Kindergarten (or 4K) through senior year of high school.  There is a progression that they've spent (countless) hours working to align so that every topic is covered, every concept is given time to develop, and every student has access to the material when they're ready.
The long and short of it is that there is a well thought out process - please trust it. 

While it may be frustrating for you at times, remember that you have all the "keys to the castle" as an adult who's been through at least 13 years of formal education.  By jumping ahead and teaching your child to simplify fractions when they don't fully understand what a fraction means, isn't setting them up to be successful. Instead, in my experience, that often sets them up to have gaps in their knowledge because they learned steps 1-3 in the process at school and then were jumped to step 7. Even though you can see how those are inter-related, it is very likely your child can't yet.  Those gaps show up in odd times later on - like when students just cross out terms in rational expressions, or aren't sure how to simplify after completing the quadratic formula. By trying to shortcut the process in those early years, it sets students up for frustration in their later years of school.
Please, trust us - and trust the process.  And when you're about to give away those "keys to the castle" reach out to the teacher (we answer emails ALL day and night it seems) about what the expectations are for an assignment.  That is FAR more appreciated than an assignment done WAY above grade level with little to know understanding of what happened other than "this is what my mom/dad showed me".

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