- Spanish Fort Middle
- Introduction
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Click here to see the K-12 mathematics standards: Alabama Course of Study for Mathematics (2019)Note: there are specific sets of standards for 7th grade, Accelerated 7th grade, 8th grade, and Accelerated 8th grade courses within this document. There is also a map of high school math pathways to help with planning.Spanish Fort Middle School math instructors are working hard to implement two frameworks upheld by the Course of Study within each classroom to improve outcomes for all students: Mathematics Teaching Practices (things teachers should be doing daily) and Student Mathematical Practices (things we should encourage all students to be doing). These frameworks are outlined below.
Mathematics Teaching Practices
1. Establish mathematics goals to focus learning. Effective teaching of mathematics establishes clear goals for the mathematics that students are learning, situates goals within learning progressions, and uses the goals to guide instructional decisions.2. Implement tasks that promote reasoning and problem solving. Effective teaching of mathematics engages students in solving and discussing tasks that promote mathematical reasoning and problem-solving and allow multiple entry points and varied solution strategies.3. Use and connect mathematical representations. Effective teaching of mathematics engages students in making connections among mathematical representations to deepen understanding of mathematics concepts and procedures and as tools for problem-solving.4. Facilitate meaningful mathematical discourse. Effective teaching of mathematics facilitates discourse among students to build shared understanding of mathematical ideas by analyzing and comparing student approaches and arguments.5. Pose purposeful questions. Effective teaching of mathematics uses purposeful questions to assess and advance students’ reasoning and sense-making about important mathematical ideas and relationships.6. Build procedural fluency from conceptual understanding. Effective teaching of mathematics builds fluency with procedures on a foundation of conceptual understanding so that students, over time, become skillful in using procedures flexibly as they solve contextual and mathematical problems.7. Support productive struggle in learning mathematics. Effective teaching of mathematics consistently provides students, individually and collectively, with opportunities and supports to engage in productive struggle as they grapple with mathematical ideas and relationships.8. Elicit and use evidence of student thinking. Effective teaching of mathematics uses evidence of student thinking to assess progress toward mathematical understanding and to adjust instruction continually in ways that support and extend learning.Student Mathematical Practices
1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. Make sense of problems and keep trying until they're solved.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively. Think about a math situation in words and symbols.
3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others. Use math to explain thinking and make sense of classmates' thinking.
4. Model with mathematics. Use math to solve real-world problems.
5. Use appropriate tools strategically. Use the best tools to solve a problem.
6. Attend to precision. Thinking is clear and answers are correct.
7. Look for and make use of structure. Look for patterns and use them to make problems easier to solve.
8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning. Notice when calculations are repeated and understand when it's ok to take shortcuts.