This got slightly creepy . ' Depends what you find pretty I guess . <| sep |> Well , let me give you an example . A student in the 6 th grade will be asked Jessica earned $ 144 mowing lawns with her 3 friends . If they split it up evenly , how much money will each of them get ? Some students will write 140 as their answer . Some will write 148 . Some will write 576 . Others will write 36 . The problem with how math has been taught for years is that students have no conceptual understanding of what they should do , because the division algorithm does not teach conceptual understanding . For that problem , I may teach students to draw 4 circles for Jessica and her friends , and ask her to evenly distribute the money to each friend until $ 144 has been used . Or maybe I ' ll draw a bar representing $ 144 , ask the students to cut the bar into 4 parts and ask them how I could find out how much each part of the bar is ? The algorithm hasn ' t gone away , rather common core has ensured that steps are taken so that students know when and why they are using the algorithm .