Hey, hey, hey, teachers! Whether it’s the end of the school year or the start of a new one, math standards for common core are an essential part of the conversation.
You have a limited time to tackle math skills for your grade level, and it can seem impossible to cover it all to student mastery. That’s what most of you have told me is the biggest challenge of teaching upper elementary students.
But, what if you had a guide outlining what math standards for the common core were necessary for math mastery at each grade level? If you knew what standards could help your students be successful in the next grade level, you could be a part of strengthening your students’ math identities.
This blog post has two main goals:
- To remind you of the kick ass job you are doing in the classroom by highlighting standards you are most likely already rocking (you go, girl!), and
- Call out how standards are linked in the upper elementary classroom and identify those, in my opinion, that are necessary for a strong math identity.
What are essential math standards for common core?
When my son was in first grade, he brought home a common core math worksheet. The problems were all about flexibility with place value. I was lovin’ it!
This is one of my biggest complaints in third grade, and many of yours too! You have shared that students are lacking number sense and place value skills along these same lines. We ALL know how important it is that students understand our place value system. We also know mastery is being able to show HOW to build numbers in a variety of ways.
The challenge was to name 52 as many ways as he could using tens and ones. Now, my little man nailed the apparent answer – 5 tens and 2 ones – but that’s where things started getting dicey, and mommy wanted to pop the cork on a bottle of wine.
Thank goodness he had some foam base ten blocks to help him out, right? Wrong! He had two hundreds, ten tens, and ten ones. What he needed was NO HUNDREDS, 5 tens, and 52 ones.
Ah, the joys of parenting and education. Gotta love ’em!
While I love he had manipulatives, he didn’t have what he needed. Thankfully, I did. A pair of scissors. (Don’t worry – I replaced the blocks). But, it was necessary to help my son understand that a TEN could be grouped and ungrouped using ones. That required a visual – hence the scissors.
To make a long story short, we found many combinations. We found 4 tens and 12 ones, 3 tens and 22 ones, 2 tens and 32 ones, 1 ten and 42 ones, and finally…52 ones!
What happens when we teach to mastery using age-appropriate learning experiences?
The biggest win was what my son said the following day. Are you ready? Your heart will melt.
He said, “I love math now!” Not only had we chopped up that tens rod, but the next night we had also used a hundreds chart to do his addition and subtraction drill and kill work. You know the kind…30 some odd problems that takes him 30+ minutes to do. And you wonder why I need the wine!
Both of these skills are ESSENTIAL to building a positive math identity. If he struggles with these basic skills, later math standards for the common core will be EVEN more difficult. What about in third, fourth, and fifth grade? While I think all math is awesome, these, from my experience, were necessary for success in the next grade level. I would love your opinion, so be sure to leave a comment below.
Third-grade math standards:
By the end of third grade, students need to understand:
- Place value: this becomes the foundation of identifying patterns in the base ten system. Students will need this to understand multiplication using the area model in grade 4, and getting flexible with decimals and larger numbers in grade 5
- Multiplication: knowing basic facts will ease the brain power required to solve for larger numbers. Also, knowing about arrays and area models build the foundation for using these strategies in grade 4 for multi-digit multiplication.
- Math properties: in fourth grade, students will use the distributive property to multiply in various ways. They also need to know they can use the associative property to factor out tens, and the commutative property to move factors (or addends) around. Math properties come back time and again. They are like math magic, but really aren’t. Definitely don’t skip these!
- Fractions: the relative size of fractions as they relate to one another is essential in third grade. Knowing that the larger denominator means MORE pieces in the whole, and therefore smaller pieces comes up time and again in grade 4 and 5.
- Metric system: understanding that moving from cm to mm is ten times more or less supports these concepts as they apply to multiplying with greater numbers, being flexible with conversions, and understanding our number system.
Fourth Grade math standards for common core:
- Reinforcement of all the above mentioned concepts and how they apply to larger or smaller numbers.
- Place value within number operations: all to often as parents and teachers move into teaching with algorithms, place value is lost. Keeping place value and making sure fourth graders understand it with whole numbers supports fifth grade learning with decimals.
- Scaling fractions to find equivalent fractions: understanding what happens when a fraction is multiplied is key as fifth graders will be working with fractions and various operations. Too often fourth graders come knowing the butterfly method, but lack the understanding of what is actually happening. Tricks are great – but when they are used in place of teaching MATH CONCEPTS, we are stealing understanding from our students.
- Factoring tens (not just adding a zero) to create flexibity with multiplication and division. 60 x 40 = (6 x 10) + (4 x 10) = (6 x 4) + (10 x 10) = 24 x 100 = 2,400. This is powerful when working with decimals and multiplying or dividing by powers of 10 to shift digts (not decimals) in grade 5.
Fifth Grade math standards:
- Patterns with multiplying fractions and decimals: fractions greater than one or less than one to determine the reasonableness of a solution.
- Base ten system of numbers: continued flexibility to the thousandths place and ease of operations (and how it relates to the metric system). Teach and reteach the prefixes for the metric system as a means of supporting students in these concepts.
- Math properties: be able to use them fluently to multiply, add, subtract, and divide (factoring tens and the associative/commutative property when multiplying, for example, or adding friendly decimal numbers)
- Place Value: using math properties and understanding decimals (not just moving the decimal, but multiplying or dividing by powers of ten and shifting the digits).
- Fractions: creating common denominators to perform various operations with fractions, decimals, and mixed numbers.
There you have it. A list of math standards for common core that require mastery to build a positive math mindset.
To recap:
- A positive math mindset is influenced by student understanding and mastery of key concepts.
- Each grade level has standards that the next grade level relies on, and without previous mastery, students can find math difficult and struggle to feel successful.
What would you add to the list? Be sure to leave a comment and share your thoughts.