The New York State Education Department has adopted Common Core Learning Standards for English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics for P-K through grade 12.  These standards will be the basis of curriculum and instruction.  They will also be the basis of the state assessments beginning with the 2012-2013 school year. The Common Core Standards have been adopted by most states across the nation.

 

What can I do to help my child with English Language Arts and Literacy?

There are six shifts in English language arts and literacy that can help you. 

1. Children should read stories and informational text in grades P-K through 5. The shift is to have readers devote the same amount of time to story reading and informational text reading. Some examples of informational texts are newspapers, magazines, technical manuals, science, social studies, and other content texts books.  Read different types of books and texts e.g. magazines, technical manuals to and with your child.  Read newspapers to and with your child.
2. Children should have a deep knowledge of academic content areas: Science, Social Studies, Arts, etc. and learn from a variety of texts. Read science and social studies books with your child.  Look for books that interest your child.
3. Children should read text that becomes more complex as they advance through the grades. Read books that become harder for your children as they progress through the P-K -12 grades.
4. Children should be able to answer questions based on the texts they read. Ask your child questions about the text. Ask your child to write about a book he or she has read. Ask your child to take a position from character’s perspective.
5. Children should learn to write from sources they read.  Children should write argumentative essays in addition to narratives. Have your child write essays based on texts they read. 
6. Children should learn academic vocabulary in the content areas and apply vocabulary words correctly. Practice increases a child’s comfort with academic words - school language. Provide opportunities for your child to explain new words and use them in a sentence. Look for ways to practice school vocabulary with your child at home. Examples of school language include such words as trace, analyze, infer, summarize, contrast, and predict. Ask your child’s teacher what academic words will be covered in your child’s grade level.
   

 

What can I do to help my child with mathematics?

There are eight Standards for Mathematical Practice that describe skills and proficiencies that students should be able to develop along their schooling careers. These are explained below:

1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
Students who are mathematically proficient start by explaining to themselves the meaning of a problem and looking for entry points to its solution.

2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
Students who are mathematically proficient make sense of quantities and their relationships in problem situations.

3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
Students who are mathematically proficient understand and use stated assumptions, definitions, and previously established results in constructing arguments.

4. Model with mathematics.
Students who are mathematically proficient can apply the mathematics they know to solve problems arising in everyday life, society, and the workplace. In early grades, this might be as simple as writing an addition equation to describe a situation. In middle grades, a student might apply proportional reasoning to plan a school event or analyze a problem in the community. By high school, a student might use geometry to solve a design problem or use a function to describe how one quantity of interest depends on another.

5. Use appropriate tools strategically.
Students who are mathematically proficient consider the available tools when solving a mathematical problem. These tools might include pencil and paper, concrete models, a ruler, a protractor, a calculator, a spreadsheet, a computer algebra system, a statistical package, or dynamic geometry software.

6. Attend to precision.
Students who are mathematically proficient try to communicate precisely to others. They try to use clear definitions in discussion with others and in their own reasoning.

7. Look for and make use of structure.
Students who are mathematically proficient look closely to discern a pattern or structure. Young students, for example, might notice that three and seven more is the same amount as seven and three more, or they may sort a collection of shapes according to how many sides the shapes have. Later, students will see 7 × 8 is the same as 7 × 5 + 7 × 3, in preparation for learning about the distributive property.

8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.
Students who are mathematically proficient notice if calculations are repeated, and look both for general methods and for shortcuts. Upper elementary students might notice when dividing 25 by 11 that they are repeating the same calculations over and over again, and conclude they have a repeating decimal.

What are the changes to content by grades in mathematics?

Pre-kindergarten: In Pre-Kindergarten, instructional time should focus on two critical areas: (1) developing an understanding of whole numbers using concrete materials, including concepts of correspondence, counting, cardinality, and comparison; (2) describing shapes in their environment. You can help your child gain mastery in these areas by counting real objects with your child at home, practicing shapes that you find in your home or environment.

Grade 1: In Grade 1, instructional time should focus on four critical areas: (1) developing understanding of addition, subtraction, and strategies for addition and subtraction within 20; (2) developing understanding of whole number relationships and place value, including grouping in tens and ones; (3) developing understanding of linear measurement and measuring lengths as iterating length units; and (4) reasoning about attributes of, and composing and decomposing geometric shapes. You can help your child gain mastery in these areas by adding and subtracting real objects at home.  For example, if I have 10 beans and I add 7 beans, how many beans will I have?

Grade 2: In Grade 2, instructional time should focus on four critical areas: (1) extending understanding of base-ten notation; (2) building fluency with addition and subtraction; (3) using standard units of measure; and (4) describing and analyzing shapes.

Grade 3: In Grade 3, instructional time should focus on four critical areas: (1) developing understanding of multiplication and division and strategies for multiplication and division within 100; (2) developing understanding of fractions, especially unit fractions (fractions with numerator 1); (3) developing understanding of the structure of rectangular arrays and of area; and (4) describing and analyzing two-dimensional shapes. 

Grade 4: In Grade 4, instructional time should focus on three critical areas: (1) developing understanding and fluency with multi-digit multiplication, and developing understanding of dividing to find quotients involving multi-digit dividends; (2) developing an understanding of fraction equivalence, addition and subtraction of fractions with like denominators, and multiplication of fractions by whole numbers; (3) understanding that geometric figures can be analyzed and classified based on their properties, such as having parallel sides, perpendicular sides, particular angle measures, and symmetry.

Grade 5: In Grade 5, instructional time should focus on three critical areas: (1) developing fluency with addition and subtraction of fractions, and developing understanding of the multiplication of fractions and of division of fractions in limited cases (unit fractions divided by whole numbers and whole numbers divided by unit fractions); (2) extending division to 2-digit divisors, integrating decimal fractions into the place value system and developing understanding of operations with decimals to hundredths, and developing fluency with whole number and decimal operations; and (3) developing understanding of volume.

Grade 6: In Grade 6, instructional time should focus on four critical areas: (1) connecting ratio and rate to whole number multiplication and division and using concepts of ratio and rate to solve problems; (2) completing understanding of division of fractions and extending the notion of number to the system of rational numbers, which includes negative numbers; (3) writing, interpreting, and using expressions and equations; and (4) developing understanding of statistical thinking.

Grade 7: In Grade 7, instructional time should focus on four critical areas: (1) developing understanding of and applying proportional relationships; (2) developing understanding of operations with rational numbers and working with expressions and linear equations; (3) solving problems involving scale drawings and informal geometric constructions, and working with two- and three-dimensional shapes to solve problems involving area, surface area, and volume; and (4) drawing inferences about populations based on samples.

Grade 8: In Grade 8, instructional time should focus on three critical areas: (1) formulating and reasoning about expressions and equations, including modeling an association in bivariate data with a linear equation, and solving linear equations and systems of linear equations; (2) grasping the concept of a function and using functions to describe quantitative relationships; (3) analyzing two- and three-dimensional space and figures using distance, angle, similarity, and congruence, and understanding and applying the Pythagorean Theorem.

High School: The high school standards specify the mathematics that all students should study in order to be college and career ready. Additional mathematics that students should learn in order to take advanced courses such as calculus, advanced statistics, or discrete mathematics. The high school standards are listed in conceptual categories:

• Number and Quantity
• Algebra
• Functions
• Modeling
• Geometry
• Statistics and Probability

Developed by the Office of School Improvement at Questar III BOCES