Elementary
INTRODUCTION
Building on the best of existing state standards, the Common Core State Standards provide clear and consistent learning goals to help prepare students for college, career, and life. The standards clearly demonstrate what students are expected to learn at each grade level, so that every parent and teacher can understand and support their learning.
Subjects
Language Arts
These standards are directed toward fostering students’ understanding and working knowledge of concepts of print, the alphabetic principle, and other basic conventions of the English writing system. These foundational skills are not an end in and of themselves; rather, they are necessary and important components of an effective, comprehensive reading program designed to develop proficient readers with the capacity to comprehend texts across a range of types and disciplines.
Common Core - Resources
- Parent Roadmaps to the Common Core Standards
- Measures of Academic Progress
- Standards of Mathematical Practice
- Information from the National PTA
Parent Roadmaps to the Common Core Standards
Parent Roadmaps to the Common Core Standards- English Language Arts and Mathematics
The Council of the Great City Schools' parent roadmaps in English language arts/literacy and Mathematics provide guidance to parents about what their children will be learning and how they can support that learning in grades K-8. These parent roadmaps for each grade level also provide three-year snapshots showing how selected standards progress from year to year so that students will be college and career ready upon their graduation from high school.
Roadmaps for English/Language Arts
Roadmaps for Mathematics
Measures of Academic Progress
The Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessments are computer adaptive achievement test in Mathematics, Reading, and Language Arts. As a student responds to questions, the test responds to the student, adjusting up or down the difficulty of the questions presented to the student.
Hickman schools started using MAP during the 2014-2015 school year. Students are assigned one of three versions of MAP based on grade level: MAP for Primary Grades (MPG), MAP 2-5, or MAP 6+. In order to track growth during the school year, students in grades 1 through 8 are assessed two or three times: in the beginning (fall), in the middle (winter), and at the end of the school year (spring).
MAP allows one to look at student growth throughout the school year and across school years. Along with other data sources, MAP helps us to determine instructional strengths and needs for our schools and students.
For more information, see the MAP Parent Toolkit linked here.
ABOUT NWEA; Founded by educators nearly 40 years ago, Northwest Evaluation Association™ (NWEA™) is a global not-for-profit educational services organization known for our flagship interim assessment, Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®). More than 7,400 partners in U.S. schools, districts, education agencies, and international schools trust us to offer pre-kindergarten through grade 12 assessments that accurately measure student growth and learning needs, professional development that fosters educators’ ability to accelerate student learning, and research that supports assessment validity and data interpretation.
To better inform instruction and maximize every learner’s academic growth, educators currently use NWEA assessments and items with nearly 10 million students.
Standards of Mathematical Practice
Dear Parent or Guardian,
California's new K–12 Common Core State Standards bring many improvements to learning mathematics. In addition to improved content standards at each grade level, the Common Core includes Standards for Mathematical Practice that describe the abilities and skills all students should develop as they study mathematics. Below are listed the eight Common Core State Standards for Mathematical Practice* so you can understand what will be asked of your children.
Your children will have to learn to:
1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
Good mathematics students know that before they can begin solving a problem they must first thoroughly understand the problem and understand which strategies might work best in finding a solution. They not only consider all the facts given in the problem, but also form an idea of the solution—perhaps an estimation or approximation—and make a plan, rather than simply jumping in without much thought. They first consider similar and related problems to gain insights. Older students might use algebraic equations or technology. Younger students might use concrete objects, drawings, or diagrams to help them “see” the problem. Good mathematics students check their progress along the way, change course if necessary, and continually ask themselves, “Does this make sense?” Even after finding a solution, good mathematics students try hard to understand how other students solved the same problem in different ways.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
Good mathematics students make sense of the numbers and their relationships in problems. They are able to represent a given situation with symbols and operations AND relate the mathematics of the problem to real life situations. They consider the units of measure involved, the size and meaning of the numbers involved, and the context of the problem and its solution. In this way, good mathematics students make sense of a problem and apply that understanding to consider if their answer makes sense.
3. Construct arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
Good mathematics students understand and use assumptions, definitions, and previously learned information in helping them build solutions. They make conjectures and apply logical thinking to explore and test their ideas. They analyze problems by breaking them down into smaller parts, and look for counterexamples. They are able to explain their results to others and answer the questions and objections of others. They analyze all available data and information carefully. Young students can explain and demonstrate their solutions by using concrete objects, drawings, and diagrams. Older students can construct intuitive or deductive proofs of their theories, either in writing, verbally, or by other means.
4. Model with mathematics.
Good mathematics students apply the mathematics they know to solve problems in everyday life, society, and the workplace. In early grades, this might be as simple as writing an addition equation to describe a real situation involving money. 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 changing one variable affects the result. Good mathematics students routinely interpret their mathematical results in the context of the situation and think about whether their results make sense.
5. Use appropriate tools strategically.
Good mathematics students consider all the mathematics tools at their disposal before beginning a problem. Tools might include pencil and paper, manipulatives, models and diagrams, a ruler, a protractor, a calculator, a spreadsheet, a graphing calculator, a computer statistical package, and/or dynamic geometry software, to mention just a few. Students are familiar with, and know how to appropriately use, mathematics tools for their grade and choose wisely the best tools to use for a particular problem. For example, older students should be able to analyze graphs of functions by using a graphing calculator; younger students should be able to use blocks to model a multiplication problem. Students should be able to search out and wisely use mathematical resources such as the library, knowledgeable individuals, and the Internet.
6. Attend to precision.
Good mathematics students learn to communicate clearly and completely to others using correct mathematical language and logical arguments. They calculate accurately and efficiently and express numerical answers with the precision required by the problem. In their discussion and presentations, good mathematics students can explain and defend their choice of symbols, operations, and processes to convince other students and adults they are correct.
7. Look for and make use of structure.
Good mathematics students discover and care- fully observe pattern, logical order, and structure in mathematics. Young students, for example, might discover that all even numbers end in 0, 2, 4, 6, or 8, while older students discover that in the ordered pairs (1, 3), (2, 5), (3, 7), (4, 9), the second number in the pair is always one more than twice the first number. Good mathematics students can also step back to view the whole, but still pay careful attention to the individual facts and numbers in a problem. Good mathematics students should be able to imagine the graph of a function, such as y = 2x + 1, before they graph it, because they understand what each element—y, =, 2, x, +, and 1 does in the algebraic generalization.
8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.
Good mathematics students know when to apply tried-and-true methods in solving a problem, and when it is most useful to apply a new approach or shortcut. For example, when middle school students convert a fraction into a decimal, they should notice when they are repeating the same calculations over and over again, and then conclude that they have a repeating decimal. Younger students should notice that when multiplying 11 by any number up to 9 they can simply double that digit to get the answer. While working to solve a problem, good mathematics students not only understand basic mathematics methods and correctly apply those methods, but also watch for novel ways to solve similar problems in more efficient ways.
To read the original academic version of the Common Core for Standards for Mathematical Practice, please visit:
www.corestandards.org/Mathematical/Practices
For more information about the California Common Core State Standards, please visit:
www.cde.ca.gov/re/cc/
For family-friendly articles and activities, visit the California Mathematics Council's "FOR FAMILIES" web pages:
www.cmc-math.org/family/
Information from the National PTA
National PTA® created the guides for grades K-8 and two for grades 9-12 (one for English language arts/literacy and one for mathematics).
The Guide includes:
Key items that children should be learning in English language arts and mathematics in each grade, once the standards are fully implemented.
Activities that parents can do at home to support their child's learning.
Methods for helping parents build stronger relationships with their child's teacher.
Tips for planning for college and career (high school only).'
You can find the guide by clicking here.
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Mathematics
The Standards for Mathematical Practice describe varieties of expertise that mathematics educators at all levels should seek to develop in their students. These practices rest on important “processes and proficiencies” with longstanding importance in mathematics education. The first of these are the NCTM process standards of problem solving, reasoning and proof, communication, representation, and connections. The second are the strands of mathematical proficiency specified in the National Research Council’s report Adding It Up: adaptive reasoning, strategic competence, conceptual understanding (comprehension of mathematical concepts, operations and relations), procedural fluency (skill in carrying out procedures flexibly, accurately, efficiently and appropriately), and productive disposition (habitual inclination to see mathematics as sensible, useful, and worthwhile, coupled with a belief in diligence and one’s own efficacy).
For more info on individual grade goals, please visit this link CoreStandards.org
Social Science
The intellectual skills noted below are to be learned through, and applied to, the content standards for kindergarten through grade five. In addition to the standards for kindergarten through grade five, students demonstrate the following intellectual, reasoning, reflection, and research skills; Chronological and Spatial Thinking, Research, Evidence, and Point of View, and Historical Interpretation.
For more information regarding the break down of individual grade goals, please visit CDE.CA.GOV
Science
The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are K–12 science content standards. Standards set the expectations for what students should know and be able to do. The NGSS were developed by states to improve science education for all students.
A goal for developing the NGSS was to create a set of research-based, up-to-date K–12 science standards. These standards give local educators the flexibility to design classroom learning experiences that stimulate students’ interests in science and prepares them for college, careers, and citizenship.
Click the link below for more information on the Next Generation Science Standards.
https://www.nextgenscience.org/
Physical Education
Although Common Core Standards are primarily focused on math and English language arts, extending these standards into all subject areas, including physical education, is a common practice, as it ensures full integration of a student’s overall educational program.
Common Core may be integrated into a physical education program, at any grade level, by:
- Providing verbal cues and instruction
- Introducing new vocabulary words
- Practicing counting using multiples when keeping score
- Spelling out words related to physical education
- Providing students with informational texts on game rules
- Applying physical education vocabulary through writing exercises