I get asked a lot for scope and sequence and so here are some ideas for each grade K-8. Please keep in mind the following when viewing the sequences for each grade level:
Sequence:
- There are lots of right ways to organize the content and each sequence is one way you may choose to use.
- Combining topics that are applications of others or that naturally align will benefit students by giving them ways to implement their learning and by seeing the connections between concepts. The more connections students can make, the better! It also benefits you because it can reduce the amount of time you might spend on concepts if you taught them all as stand-alone concepts.
- Get creative – if you have ideas about how concepts can be connected, try it out!
- The content is NOT the most important aspect of the curriculum – the curricular competencies are the vehicle through which you will teach so they are to be used in order to teach the content. You will use multiple competencies in order to teach each content standard.
- Each sequence will start with review or the most basic content first so that we help our students get a strong foundation before attempting to build on it. However, I strongly advise using diagnostics (paper and pencil and/or interview) in order to know if you need to revisit previous years’ content areas. We need to meet our students where they are at and so charging ahead with the current grade level’s content may not be appropriate.
Scope:
- See the elaborations in the curriculum for ideas for scope – they will guide you in a variety of activities to dig deeper into the content.
- Also use the Big Ideas as a guide. The goal is to teach students the content by using the competencies to get to the Big Ideas. If your students understand the big ideas, it’s time to move forward.
- If you aren’t sure what a content standard means or an elaboration means please comment on this post or email me so we can offer support! Sometimes the language used is really tough to understand (especially if you are not math trained).
- How long you spend on a given concept will depend entirely on the students in your class. Some years a fraction unit would take 2-3 weeks, while other times it took 6 weeks. The goal is for all students to achieve mastery at the most minimal level, with as many as you can achieving mastery at all levels. Students who understand the concept well conceptually and procedurally can be challenged with some problems related to the concept (nrich.maths.org has some great problems that are easy to give to students and also https://www.cemc.uwaterloo.ca/resources/potw.php has great problems for these students)
These are the sequences I created for each grade level. Please share and give feedback! I’d love to hear what worked:
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Hi Nikki,
Thank you so much for this great graffic that describes the new curriculum. Makes much more sense this way. This year I am teaching a grade 6/7/8 split of diverse learners. After some initial assessments our students are between grade 1 and grade 7 level in math. I am trying to move away from streaming for math and would love to do something like math teams, open problems etc. but have a hard time envisioning how this might work given the composition of my class includes some kids with some major behaviors and some with major reading/writing deficits. Chronic absenteeism is also an issue for several students. I have a coteacher and an EA for support.
Would love to hear your thoughts on how to shape my scope and sequence for this diverse group and how I could best teach this class.
Thank you!
Thanks for reaching out! What a tough position you are in! So many hurdles, but I agree that using math teams and open problems would be helpful – even if you do that for half the time. Here are some suggestions:
I’d also work on incorporating growth mindset work into all of this and letting them know from the beginning that every one of them is unique and comes with different strengths and needs so they will not always be doing the same thing at the same time in the same way. Equity means that everyone gets their needs met but this is often done by doing different things. There are some concepts that lend themselves more to some independent learning but I feel that most of the concepts are better learned and understood when there is interaction with others and time to work through problems and reason aloud.
I hope this helps!