Using “Fact Sheets” for Next Year’s Math Planning

/in /by

In the Smarter Balanced section of our website, each grade level (3-HS) has a link to the “Concept and Procedure (Claim 1) Fact Sheets”.  These fact sheets were designed to help you in your classroom planning around the skills students need to acquire to be considered proficient in the standards.  These Fact Sheets were designed by taking the Smarter Balanced Item Specifications released in September 2015 and summarizing the key information.

When you print out all the Smarter Balanced math item specifications for all grades, it will take about 1,500 sheets of paper!  What teacher has time to look through those?!  Our SMc Curriculum team took these 1,500 pages of information and created the “Fact Sheets” for you to use to inform your scope and sequence as you think about what you covered this year and what you will change for the 2016-17 school year.

Each “Fact Sheet” (see this Grade 8 example) includes the following information:

  • The Target’s (cluster) priority level – either be “Priority” or “Supporting”.  Priority targets make up 75% or more of the Claim 1 items on the CAT Smarter Balanced assessment.  These priority targets are the topics that should be addressed in our classrooms for conceptual understanding, procedural fluency and application.  In most cases, these priority targets should make up 75-80% of our scope and sequence for a school year!
  • The standards included in the Target – the actual Common Core State Standards the Target on Smarter Balanced refers to
  • The Achievement Level Descriptors (ALD) – the most important part!  The ALDs go from Level 1 to Level 4 with Level 3 considered a “proficient” or meeting level on Smarter Balanced.  Unlike a rubric, a Level 1 on a target’s ALD does not mean a student knows nothing about a standard. Instead it describes what a student should be able to do at the entry level of this on-grade-level target.  Level 1 descriptors are often a great goal for some students with special needs at the RTI Tier 2 or Tier 3 levels.  Each ALD after Level 1 is building on the previous levels.  Some components of the standards don’t actually appear in the ALDs until Level 4(i.e. mean absolute deviation in Grades 6 and 7).  This information can help you as a teacher not spend too much time on parts of the standards that can be reserved for extensions for certain students (Level 4 ALDs) while making sure you are scaffolding and hitting all the necessary components of the target (Levels 1-3).
  • Construct-Revelant Vocabulary – the vocab words used with students for a specific target.  There are times when you read the standards and you wonder, “Will they actually ask students to ‘decompose’ the number on the test?”  The list of construct-relevant vocabulary helps you answer that for each target by listing out the math vocabulary students may see in assessment items for this target.
  • Allowable Stimulus Materials – the way students will see the items.  This is just another piece to inform your instruction and make sure you are using the models they will be seeing at assessment time.  For example, if I know they might see a “function machine” in Grade 8 for Target E, I will want to make sure I include “function machines” in my instruction on functions.
  • Allowable Tools (for Grades 6-HS only) – is the calculator turned on or not?  The only allowable tool we focused on while creating these Fact Sheets was the calculator.  Other tools might be turned on for individual items, like a protractor for measuring angles, but whether or not a calculator is allowed for certain targets at the secondary grades (it is never turned on in Grades 3-5 in Smarter Balanced) is hugely important for guiding classroom work and assessment.  By examining when a calculator is made available to students in the summative assessment (Smarter Balanced or other large benchmarking assessment), you can have informed conversations with your collaborative teams about whether or not you will allow students to use a calculator in a unit for all, some or none of the work.

The item specifications also include sample items which we have chosen to share with you item slide shows (you can read about those here).  Let us know other thoughts on how to use the Fact Sheets or other information you feel would be helpful in your planning for instructing in a standards-based classroom!

EngageNY and the Personal Whiteboard (Part three of a three-part series)

/in /by

 

If you have been using any component of EngageNY’s K-5 math curriculum, A Story of Units, there is no question that you’ve had to copy and/or produce a variety of classroom tools and resources for you and your students.  While our last two posts directed you towards suggestions for planning, assessment, and homework, today’s entry is all about students and the personal whiteboard. We are highlighting some of our best discoveries and creations below, and you can find them – plus many more – at the EngageNY support section of our website, ccssmathactivities.com.  Click on your grade level, and then choose the blue button labeled “Classroom Tools.”  Check back often as we are always adding new free downloads!

The Personal Whiteboard

Almost every lesson in EngageNY recommends students use a “personal whiteboard.”  While many of us have actual board-like student-size whiteboard sets in our classrooms, those are not always the best choice for maximizing the ideas in the curriculum.  EngageNY suggests that you use clear sheet protectors so that students can slip blank templates in and out, thus saving on copies and also giving students clear scaffolding for their work.

After some initial disappointing results with cheaper, thinner sheet protectors, we have found our favorite:  Avery Top Load Clear Vinyl Envelopes (product number 74804).  They come in packs of 10 for about $9 per pack.  These are sturdy, crystal clear, and don’t crinkle when students erase. A small investment in these, plus thin-tipped Expo markers and a piece of fleece cut into squares for erasers, will provide your students an excellent way to practice the different EngageNY models.

A few teacher tips we’ve picked up for whiteboard management:

  • At the beginning of the year, label the Expo pens and caps with student names. It’s amazing how much better our young friends take care of the marker and accompanying cap when it becomes “their” property!
  • Slice the tops off of manila file folders (we like to find the stack of used ones in the staff room, since you’re cutting the tops off anyway) and leave them inside the Avery vinyl envelopes. Students can collect templates there, and it also provides a little extra stiffness for the board.
  • Copy templates you use often on different colored papers. This way, it’s easier for students to find.  “Please put your green number bond template on one side of your board and leave the other side blank.”

Templates to go with that personal whiteboard

Whenever EngageNY asks you to use a certain template in the whiteboard, you may or may not be able to find it easily in your teacher’s guide.  Quite often, blackline templates appear the first time they’re needed, and then it’s up to you to keep a copy on hand (easy to do if students keep them in the whiteboard).  Sometimes, just knowing that fact at the beginning of the year can save a lot of time later on!

Many of the popular templates for EngageNY, such as the number bonds and place value charts, are used so often that we have found it’s handy to have different versions of them so that students can practice using them in a variety of ways.  To that end, we have created a variety of printable templates for you to download and use with your personal whiteboards (once you click on the link, choose your grade level and select the blue button labeled “Classroom Tools.”)

One of our favorite go-to resources for the personal whiteboard is this series we created that allows students to put together numbers to ten (and twenty, on a separate download) using a ten frame, number bond, and equation.  On each page of the download, the equation provides less structure, increasing students’ responsibility for selecting and placing the proper symbols.

 

ENY

There are so many other things we want to share about the “Classroom Tools” section of our grade-level EngageNY support pages, it’s become clear that this three-part series will definitely expand to some more parts in the near future!  In the meantime, please let us know what additional templates or supports you’d like to see for EngageNY…you are probably not alone, and we love to help!

EngageNY and the Homework Experience (Part two of a three-part series)

/in /by

Last week, we posted about some of our favorite planning and assessment materials for the popular EngageNY K-5 math curriculum, A Story of Units.  This week, we continue that series by sharing some of our observations and go-to resources for the homework piece of EngageNY.

If you’ve worked with EngageNY much at all, you might just have noticed that the way the curriculum leads students through the conceptual development process is probably not the way your students’ parents and caregivers (and you!) were taught to do math.  Right away, teachers assigning the homework component had to become public relations specialists and work to build happy math bridges between home and school.

Two districts created solutions to this early on, and we are so very happy that they have made their resources available online.

Parent Newsletters by Module and Topic. 

A team at Lafayette Parish School System in Lafayette, Louisiana created newsletters (choose your grade level and click on the purple “homework support for parents and caregivers” button) for each EngageNY topic.  That means they have one for every handful of lessons that explains the learning objectives, vocabulary, models, and concepts for the coming days.  We love that they have included illustrations and step-by-step instructions whenever possible to show how some of the models or processes work!

Video Explanations and Homework Pages. 

On the other side of the U.S., the Oakdale Joint Unified School District in Oakdale, California has created videos (again, choose your grade level and click on the purple “homework support for parents and caregivers” button) showing how to complete the homework for each lesson! Their collection also includes a completed activity (usually the problem set) and blank homework pages to download in English and Spanish.

Keep in mind, there are other creative ways to address the homework issue!  Here are a couple ideas and strategies you might want to consider as well:

Use the Problem Set as a Guide. 

If you are unsure about parents (or students) having access to all the completed homework pages, consider having students attach that day’s completed problem set to their blank homework page, so that they have something to reference when they get home.  You could also create a finished problem set yourself if you need to provide a model for neatness or showing work.

Keep it at School. 

Depending on the lesson, you can usually use the problem set during instruction as guided practice during the lesson, and then have students complete the homework as their independent practice in class.  If you do send home math homework, consider giving review work or fact fluency practice from other non-EngageNY sources.

How have you handled the homework aspect of EngageNY?  Feel free to leave a comment so others can benefit from your experience!

You Are Not Alone: Planning Your Year With EngageNY (The first of a three-part series)

/in /by

The EngageNY math curriculum for K-5, A Story of Units, has become extraordinarily popular due to its strong focus on conceptual development, value (free is a very good price), and online availability.  But as with all new materials, it takes time to find what works for you, your students, and your district.

In the hopes of saving you a little bit of that time, we here at CCSS Math Activities have collected some of our favorite EngageNY resources from around the U.S.  This is the first of a series of posts about those resources and how we like to use them!

Planning

Need to figure out how to squeeze 180-day EngageNY curriculum into your school year, and include time for assemblies, field trips, snow days, and even some reteaching?  A team at Federal Way Public Schools in Federal Way, Washington created a compacted pacing guide (click on the green “planning and assessment” button once you choose your grade level) that provides suggestions for which lessons can be combined or omitted.  We really like that they included the reasoning for their recommendations, which allows you to make the final decisions for yourself!

Assessment

Also from Federal Way comes a collection of CCSS-aligned “Snapshot Assessments” (again, click on the green “planning and assessment” button once you choose your grade level) that they have organized by standard within each EngageNY module.  Teachers we have worked with use these assessments to fill a variety of needs, including using them as:

  • Common formative assessments for data team/PLC discussion
  • Quizzes for grading purposes
  • Additional practice problems for reteaching or review

Have you used the Snapshots in a different way?  Let us know so others can benefit from your experience!