Teaching Math The Right Way – Part 3: Math Scope & Sequence

Teaching Mathematics | 4 comments

This is video 3, the last video in a mini-series I’ve been doing about Are You Teaching Math The Right Way. In this final video, we’re going to delve into a question I get a lot, “What order and how long should we spend on teaching specific math concepts?”. In this vlog, we’re going to look at the scope and sequence of how math should be taught.

Watch the video or read the transcript below.

If you missed part 1 and part 2 of this video series, you can go watch those first, then come back or watch them afterward.

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Why Do We Need A Scope & Sequence

First, let’s discuss why we even need a scope and sequence? Some of you may call it a “pacing guide” and I hate that term. It just has such a negative connotation of how it’s used. For starters, it’s usually used in association with a textbook with a pace you need to go at so that you finish the book. But the fact is your book is not what you should be teaching. The standards aren’t set up in a way that you should just teach the standards.

The hard part is, there isn’t anything out there telling us what we should be doing. So we default to our textbook because someone has thought this out. Someone has laid this out and said “this is the order things should be taught”. So we go with it. The nice part about having a textbook and having a whole series, and this is why your administration might be saying you need to follow the pacing guide, is so kids have the opportunity to learn the same things and so there are no gaps in their learning from one grade level to the next. Because a textbook is all laid out with the understanding that they started in kindergarten and then they’re moving all the way up through the grade levels. However, that’s also assuming that every single one of your kids has started in your district in kindergarten using the same textbook all the way through, right? This is if they haven’t moved districts or haven’t had any trouble learning that information. It’s an assumption of an ideal world that really is not what happens in education. So textbooks are well meaning.

There Is No ONE Scope & Sequence

Pacing guides are well meaning and help make sure that kids get exposure. However, if you saw video 2, it’s not about just covering everything. We really want to make sure we’re going in depth on certain concepts. So each year, you have to kind of assess your group of kids and say okay these are the big things…What do they have, what don’t they have? Then you have to decide what order you should do that in. With every group of kids, unfortunately, that’s going to be different. Even if you stay at the same grade level your whole career, you know every year, that group of students is just a little different than last year’s students.

So you have to be able to know the big things, the approximate order I’d like to teach them in, but have some freedom to say okay, these kids need a little bit more time developing this thing and then I’m going to have to shorten the amount of time I do this thing. Or they’ve really got this down, I’m just going to go a little bit shorter through that and then it gives us more time to go even more in-depth on this other thing. But always keeping in mind those key things from the previous video when we talked about what they’re really supposed to take away from each grade level.

Resources

As I said, there is no one resource that is the go-to that everybody says is the order things should be taught in or the approximate time it should take you to teach that concept. Here’s the thing, it’s not just a concept. For example, when our standards first got out, it was kind of seen as a list. You would start with the first standard and teach that. Then, you go to the next one and the next one and the next one. However, that is not the way the standards are meant to be taught. They are meant to be taught in groups, in clusters of things that work together. The standard that was at the beginning of the standards might work really nice with something that’s at the end of your list of standards. I really love it when students will talk about things that go together. I remember one of the last textbooks that I taught out of. I was teaching sixth grade, and they had decimals first. Then a few chapters later it was fractions. Then a few chapters after that there was percents. And none of that was taught together or even as separate chapters but next to each other so that we could have those conversations. So whatever resource you’re using, I really want you to think about what parts of the content should really be taught together. What connections do you want your kids to make within the grade level? Then see if you can move some things around to help kids see those connections. One of my favorite places to go and look at some ways that we can craft units and what order to teach them in is Illustrative Mathematics. Please see the video for a walkthrough of IllustrativeMathematics.org. When I first learned of it, the way I thought of it was this site helps me illustrate, it gives me an illustration of what the standards are telling me. On the site, you can take a look at a possible scope and sequence. A couple of things I love about the site are:

  • It’ completely free.
  • One of the lead people behind this site was a lead writer of the Common Core Standards. So if you’re a state that uses Common Core Standards, this is a great resource to be able to tie it to your standards.
  • It lays out possible sequences of the big ideas for each grade.
  • It is not tied to one particular curriculum.
  • It doesn’t call for any prerequisite of students understanding.
  • It provides major concepts and takeaways kids need, a summary, and links to other complementing units.
  • It also has great Blueprints.

You don’t have to use that resource if your textbook has things laid out, I want you to take a critical look at it and see if you think that there might be a better way to arrange it.

You are Teaching the Right Way, Right Now

The last thing I want you to think about is your reality of teaching. In our state, our state testing starts in third grade. Your state testing may be different. However, from third grade on, one of the big concerns is getting everything in before the state test. I know that’s not the best way to think about teaching, but it’s the reality of teaching these days. Basically, you need to get all of these big things in before April because that’s when your kids are tested on them.

So I want you to take a look at your scope and sequence, your plan for this year and take a look. Are you getting those key items in before those important deadlines? If you’re waiting until April to do fractions in third grade, that’s a big deal. Now remember in my last video, I talked about it’s not about covering. I don’t want you to just cover material just because it’s going to be on the test. But there are some really big things that we need to go into in-depth and that’s the problem. I don’t want you to hurry up and cover fractions before the test. It should be a really big deal in third grade and you need to allow time for that within the plan for the year. So take a look at what you’ve got right now through a critical lens. Take a look at what Illustrative Math has for the blueprints, and see if there are some things where you’re like “oh yeah, I like how they moved this here and how that connects”, and see if you could rearrange some of the material you already have.

Alright, the final thing I’m going to leave you with is as I’ve been doing this series, it brought to mind the power of being able to learn more. Please understand, the way you are teaching right now is perfect. You are doing the best you can with the information you have right now. I don’t want you to feel like you’re not doing it right. You’re doing it the best you can with the information you have right now. When you are presented with new information, when you learn something, when you read a book, when you watch one of these videos, I hope it sparks something in you that makes you want to change your teaching just a little bit. Change one part of your teaching and keep striving to do just a little bit better.

We all get better as we learn more and that’s one of the reasons why I started my online PD community. For those that don’t know,I have a professional development community called The Build Math Minds PD Community. It’s a monthly or yearly membership where I provide trainings that are more extensive than my vlogs. I have specific trainings and webinars. You have probably seen some of my free trainings, all of those have gone into that membership site for members to have access at any time. I created this so I could share the information I’ve learned with other teachers out there. Because let’s be honest, as elementary teachers, we have to be learning the new science standards, learning language arts and be learning new curriculum on top of standards. There are so many things that we have to be “masters” of, and mathematics may not be your favorite thing. Or maybe it is your favorite thing, but there’s so many other things that we also have to learn that it’s helpful to be able to learn from someone who’s “gone before you.”

When I’m having trouble with one of my kids around reading or helping them with phonics I don’t know anything about, I go and ask the teachers that I know are the pros in ELA because I don’t know that stuff. So if you want to learn more from me, if you like this free content that I put out there, I would love to have you join Build Math Minds, a professional development community full of elementary educators who are all on this quest to build our math minds so that we can build the math minds of our students. As you learn about this balance between conceptual and procedural, what is the “right way” to teach math, and what to try. It’s just helpful to have a community of educators to bounce ideas off of.

I’ve heard lots of teachers talk about how they are the only teacher who’s trying to do this; teach math a different way. That can be lonely and it can be hard because you start second guessing yourself as to whether or not you’re doing this whole thing right. It was not my intention for this series to lead to an invitation to come join the community but if you’ve liked this, if you’re still kind of wondering and want to learn more about the right way to teach math, I would love to have you come join me as a member of Build Math Minds.I hope that all of my trainings, regardless if you become a member or not, help you to build your math mind so you can build the math minds of your students.

Join The Build Math Minds PD Community