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WELCOME to the Kansas State Department of Education Math Website!

Over time this site will continue to grow and improve.  Please feel free to explore the tabs at the top of the screen to access information about mathematics standards and assessments. 

All users have access to the various pages of this site listed in the menus included within the blue banner near the top of the screen.

If you are a math educator from Kansas, please register at the top right-hand corner of this page to apply for access to additional materials, including blogs, wikis and forums on math education in Kansas.

 If you are having trouble finding a resource, please use the contact information at the bottom of the page to ask about it.  We intended to transfer everything from the old math web pages, but it is certainly possible we missed something and we understand that many visitors to our site may take a little time to get used to finding things on these new pages.
Common Core Shifts for Math

 1. Focus strongly where the Standards focus

Focus: The Standards call for a greater focus in mathematics. Rather than racing to cover topics in today’s mile-wide, inch-deep curriculum, teachers use the power of the eraser and significantly narrow and deepen the way time and energy is spent in the math classroom. They focus deeply on the major work* of each grade so that students can gain strong foundations: solid conceptual understanding, a high degree of procedural skill and fluency, and the ability to apply the math they know to solve problems inside and outside the math classroom.

 2. Coherence: think across grades, and link to major topics* within grades

Thinking across grades: The Standards are designed around coherent progressions from grade to grade. Principals and teachers carefully connect the learning across grades so that students can build new understanding onto foundations built in previous years. Teachers can begin to count on deep conceptual understanding of core content and build on it. Each standard is not a new event, but an extension of previous learning.

Linking to major topics: Instead of allowing additional or supporting topics to detract from the focus of the grade, these topics can serve the grade level focus. For example, instead of data displays as an end in themselves, they support grade-level word problems.

3. Rigor: in major topics* pursue: Conceptual understanding, Procedural skill and fluency, and Application with equal intensity.

Conceptual understanding: The Standards call for conceptual understanding of key concepts, such as place value and ratios. Teachers support students’ ability to access concepts form a number of perspectives so that students are able to see math as more than a set of mnemonics or discrete procedures.

Procedural skill and fluency: The Standards call for speed and accuracy in calculation. Teachers structure class time and/or homework time for students to practice core functions such as single-digit multiplication so that students have access to more complex concepts and procedures.

Application: The Standards call for students to sue math flexibly for applications. Teachers provide opportunities for students to apply math in context. Teachers in content areas outside of math, particularly science, ensure that students are using math to make meaning of and access content.

*Priorities in Support of Conceptual Understanding and Fluency
Grade K-2 - Addition and subtraction—concepts, skills, and problem solving
Grade 3-5 - Multiplication and division of whole numbers and fractions-concepts skills, and problem solving
Grade 6 - Ratios and proportional relationships; early expressions and equations
Grade 7 - Ratios and proportional relationships; arithmetic of rational numbers 2
Grade 8 - Linear algebra
NEW Information

In this section you will find NEW information in the field of mathematics. Just because the infomation is listed it does not necessarily mean that KSDE endorses the content. This is just a collection of math related information that is being accessed by educators across Kansas.

If you know of any new information you would like to share with the field please feel free to upload it for approval to the site. In order to upload information you must be a registered user to the site.

The database is searchable by the various categories listed.

If you read one of the items, please come back to the site and rate it so other teachers have more input about which ones to review.

*Note: make sure you have your browser set to accept pop-ups from this site in order to view the resources listed.

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2013 Statistics Project Competition  --  VISIT
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Fri 05/24/2013 @ 07:43
Introduce students in grades 7–12 to statistics through an annual project competition. Directed by the ASA/NCTM Joint Committee on Curriculum in Statistics and Probability, the 2013 Statistics Project Competition offers opportunities for students to formulate questions and collect, analyze, and draw conclusions from data. Winners will be recognized with plaques, cash prizes, certificates, and calculators, and their names will be published in . Projects are due June 1. Judges are currently being sought—judging takes place by e-mail during the summer and requires approximately four hours of time. If interested, email James Perrett.


Competition for Best Statistics Education Web Lesson Plan  --  VISIT
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Fri 05/24/2013 @ 07:42
STatistics Education Web (STEW) is a free online resource for peer-reviewed lesson plans for K–12 teachers. Lessons should demonstrate statistics concepts from the grades 4–12 curriculum by using Census at School data. You have the opportunity to write a STEW lesson plan that incorporates data from the Census at School website. Cash prizes are available for the best lessons. Census at School is a free international classroom project that engages students in statistical problem solving that uses their own real data. Lesson plan entries using Census at School data or concepts are due July 15.


WSU Summer KCCRS Workshop FREE to first 20 enrolled  --  VISIT
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Thu 05/23/2013 @ 08:01

Wichita State University in conjunction with Wichita Public Schools will offer three summer workshops to prepare Pre-K – high school math teachers for the Kansas College and Career Ready Standards for Math. This workshop will be one hour of graduate credit and will be June 3 - 7 from 8:30 – 11:30 at Corbin Education Center. These workshops will be offered in three levels:

- Grades Pre-K – 2: counting and cardinality, "subitizing", place value, addition and subtraction computation

- Grades 3 – 5: whole number computation with understanding; fraction number sense and computation

- Grades 6- Alg: ratios and proportional relationships; linear and non-linear functions 

Full tuition support will be provided by a grant, with reimbursement upon completion of the workshop, for the first 20 people enrolled in each course.

 


REVISED KCCRS Fact Sheet  --  VISIT
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Tue 05/21/2013 @ 10:50
REVISED fact sheet over the KCCRS.


Free Webinar: Extending Fraction Understanding Part 4: Fractions in Primary Grades  --  VISIT
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Tue 05/21/2013 @ 08:26

Extending Fraction Understanding Part 4: Fractions in Primary Grades
Tuesday, May 21, 2013- 4pm / Eastern Time

In This Session
Join Sara Delano Moore, Ph. D., Director of Mathematics and Science at ETA hand2mind, for our community’s next webinar, which will be devoted to fractions in the primary grades.  While the formal study of fractions begins in grade 3 under CCSS, foundations are laid in the primary grades. The idea of sharing fairly is an important one for early fraction study. Geometry standards in grades 1 and 2 focus on partitioning shapes into equal shares. Work with measurement (particularly measuring length) also provides context for fractions. In addition to these two settings, we will explore connections from fractions to money and time during our interactive session.  Join Sara on May 21st to learn more about teaching fractions in the primary grades.

To Participate in the Live Session
- Login at www.instantpresenter.com/edwebnet4 at the scheduled time.
- There is no pre-registration for this event.
- This webinar will be recorded and archived in this community for viewing at anytime.

Here are some helpful tips for the best webinar experience
- Being hardwired is best, not wireless
- Test your system for best quality: www.instantpresenter.com/systemtest
- Close Skype and any other applications that use internet bandwidth
- Close any unnecessary applications


Children's Spatial Skills Seen as Key to Math Learning  --  VISIT
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Tue 05/21/2013 @ 08:23
Preschools and kindergartens long have taught children "task skills," such as cutting paper and coloring inside the lines. But new research suggests the spatial and fine-motor skills learned in kindergarten and preschool not only prepare students to write their mathematics homework neatly, but also prime them to learn math and abstract reasoning.


The pros and cons of using calculators in math class  --  VISIT
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Tue 05/21/2013 @ 08:21
The availability and efficiency of calculators makes them a useful tool for students, asserts middle-school math teacher José Vilson. However, in this blog post, he also notes the potential downside of using calculators -- primarily that they could reduce students' understanding of the work they are completing. Instead, Vilson suggests a middle ground in which students are able to use calculators to solve complex problems but also are taught to understand the number system. Edutopia.org/José Vilson's blog


How to help students believe they are "math people"  --  VISIT
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Tue 05/21/2013 @ 08:20
There are many reasons for math anxiety, from fears passed on to students from their parents to lessons that fail to connect math to real life. Some also say the anxiety can begin in elementary school, where educators who are not confident in their math skills spend less time teaching the subject to students. Many educators and colleges are working to reverse this trend. For example, a New Hampshire college offers a program that seeks to prepare more elementary-school math specialists. The Keene Sentinel (N.H.)


EDC course on the mathematical practices for high school teachers  --  VISIT
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Fri 05/17/2013 @ 01:25

Here's a note from Al Cuoco:

Friends,

For the past two years, we've been working with support from the MA department of education to create a course for high school teachers that helps them implement the Standards for Mathematical Practice. The approach of the design is to take examples suggested by the high school content standards—everyday, non-exotic content that is hard to teach and that causes students difficulty—and to develop that content in ways that are consistent with the practice of mathematics as it exists outside of high school, making the topics easier to teach, easier to learn, and more satisfying for everyone.

We field tested the course with over 100 teachers in two sessions over the past two summers at EDC. The a team of 10 colleagues (teachers who work with us) taught it in pairs in 5 sessions around the state at the end of last summer. All of this led to revisions, and we're now publishing the course and offering it nationally. A sampler is at http://mpi.edc.org/dmp-hs-sampler


NCSM Leadership Academy  --  VISIT
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Fri 05/10/2013 @ 08:00

Mathematics Leadership at Work:
Formative Assessment in Support of the Common Core State Standards and Assessment

July 23-25, 2013
Los Angeles Area-Monrovia, CA

July 29-31, 2013
Columbus, OH

The 2013 NCSM Summer Leadership Academy will focus on formative assessment strategies and resources for the classroom and professional learning.

Participating mathematics leaders and their teachers will learn more about:

  • formative assessment as a powerful instructional tool,
  • resources that mathematics education leaders and teachers can use to help their systems grow in understanding and use of formative assessment strategies, and
  • how to use formative assessment to support implementation and prepare for assessment of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics
KEYNOTE SPEAKER:  Phil Daro


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Contact Information

 

David Barnes  Melissa Fast Juanita Anderson 
Math/Science Program Consultant  Math and Assessment Program Consultant  Senior Administrative Assistant
 dbarnes@ksde.org mfast@ksde.org  janderson@ksde.org 
785-296-2091  785-296-3486  785-296-1130 
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