I had a great day yesterday up in Raleigh at the North Carolina Dept. of Public Instruction. We have started the design of curricular units and professional development around critical areas of focus in the K-5 Common Core State Standards in Mathematics. The units, which we are calling, Focal Units on the Common Core State Standards, will center on the following main concepts:
Kindergarten- Composing, decomposing ten
1st Grade- Making 10s, Base Ten System
2nd Grade- Adding and Subtracting 2 and 3 digit numbers
3rd Grade- Area and Perimeter, Array models of multiplication
4th Grade- Whole number operations, focusing on multi-digit multiplication and division
5th Grade- multiplying and dividing fractions and decimals
While the design of a curricular unit will only provide a small resource to teachers, the intent is to give teachers across the state a resource, and an example of standards-based instruction- cognitively demanding tasks, high-level questions about students’ mathematical thinking, and instructional activities that are allow to meet the needs of a range of learners.
For those with standards-based curricula already, this will serve as another unit of resources.
Professional development about these units and grade-level specific PD will be offered in August in 3 locations across the state. Unfortunately, due to limited funding, PD will only last one day, with potential for follow-up via online support during the 2011-2012 school year.
All materials for the unit and professional development will be available via the web.
All Common Core resources can be found here at my website.
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