Determining what math our students should learn and how well they should learn it within the time constraints of a school year is an ongoing challenge for Marshalltown. For the past 1� years they have made this work a priority in kindergarten through sixth grade. They have moved toward a model where standards are prioritized, with core curriculum aligned to those standards. Nonaligned lessons are removed and mastery content is identified.

The Iowa Core principles - focus, coherence, and rigor - fit perfectly into this vision.  

The Way It Used to Be 

Four years ago the Marshalltown Community School District implemented enVision Math, and for the most part proficiency has been acceptably increasing at all grade levels. What became a concern of the teachers, however, was that for the past three years kindergarten through grade six math data has shown a lower percentage of students were proficient as students advanced across the grade levels, and the cumulative effect is significant at 21 percent. This means that out of 400 students (the average number of students in each grade at Marshalltown), 85 more children were not proficient in math. This grave situation had their Elementary Math Leadership Team asking, "What causes student proficiency to decline as they move through our system, and what must be changed to fix it?"

Fifth-grade teachers, __________________, who work first-hand every day with the very students who are losing proficiency, suggested to their district math team that the problem may be coverage - teaching too many topics too fast and moving students on to new learning without giving them time to deeply understand and/or master anything. The Marshalltown math curriculum, with 140 lessons in each grade level, is designed to move students on to new learning every day, with or without deep understanding or mastery. To accommodate this, there is a "spiral back" feature in lesson planning where teachers use 5-10 minutes daily to go back and reteach the misunderstood and unlearned content. Unfortunately, 5-10 minute exposures has not been consistently conducive to deep learning experiences and conceptual mastery. The effect is that the  students in grades 4-6 lacked the foundational knowledge necessary to learn and understand upper-grade-level math. "So, if that's our problem, what's our solution?" they asked.

On the Way to a Solution 

The teachers started in the summer of 2012 with a vision. Each grade level would 1) prioritize standards to identify the most important learning; 2) align enVision Math lessons to the prioritized standards; 3) remove lessons that do not align to standards; and 4) identify and assess mastery content to support students' learning of upper-grade- level math. Last year they put this vision into action, piloting the work in fifth grade. They used their previous standards, not the Iowa Core Standards. Before school began they prioritized their standards and aligned enVision Math lessons to them, removing 49 of their 140 lessons and identifying 45 mastery skills using ther enVision Math Scope and Sequence. This pilot work resulted in a 6 percent increase in proficiency on fifth-grade Iowa Assessment Mathematics scores. These positive results, coupled with the Iowa Core implementation deadline, directed their work this past summer.  

Aligning to the Iowa Core 

The District Elementary Math Leadership Team spent the summer prioritizing Iowa Core Mathematics Standards as "critical" or "supporting," then aligning K-6 enVision Math curriculum to them. Following the process used in the pilot, the math team removed instruction, ranging from 28-43 percent, at every grade level. They found that one-third of the lessons in enVision Math did not align with the Iowa Core Standards. There are 960 math lessons in K-6, and they removed 314 misaligned lessons (33 percent). Fewer topics are now covered because faithfully following the Standards means critical areas of learning are identified and focused upon using deep, meaningful learning experiences. Following the standards also means all students master critical math concepts. For the first time, pacing guides have been developed that reflect focus on the Iowa Core's critical learning and feasible time for all students to deeply understand and make meaning of concepts.  

And the Learning? 

Even though instruction was removed at every grade level, no learning has been lost because the Iowa Core realignment allowed for the movement of topics to higher grades where the concepts are studied in-depth and learning connections can be made. "We feel confident about the content we removed at each grade level because with the structure of the Iowa Core, it just makes sense!"  Iowa Core requires each grade level to dedicate 65-85 percent of instructional time to just a few critical areas of learning, validating these teachers' summer 2012 work. This has given students more time to experience deeply and master the knowledge and skills research shows are essential to college and career readiness.

Discovering the Iowa Core Content Progressions was the most exciting moment of their summer work. Learning is organized into topic Progressions across a number of grade levels which connect to and extend from the strong foundations set in earlier grade-level critical areas. Topics build in a way that allows students to "spiral forward" their strong foundations of knowledge and experience the elegance of learning math by making logical connections between mathematical ideas within and across grade levels. "Does it not make more sense to have students spiraling forward strong, foundational mathematical principles upon which their new learning builds, rather than spiraling backward every day for 5-10 minutes, trying to fix prior failed learning experiences?" they asked.  A much more proactive way to students' learning! 

The Iowa Core Standards organize learning into groups of related standards called "domains."Their previous standards were organized in parallel "strands." A strands-type of standards does not emphasize relationships between and among topics that occur in different strands. Content organized by strands makes it difficult for students in upper grades to learn new math because it is presented in random, disconnected pieces that do not make sense to the students. Eventually, they see math as a never-ending expansion of new ideas that are hard to learn. The fact that Marshalltown identified 45 mastery skills for their pilot year is evidence of this drastic difference.  

What's Next? 

Because of the Iowa Core implementation, some standards and instruction are "transitional" this year and will need to be reviewed. Mastery content must be refined and assessments reviewed/developed to ensure all students achieve expected mastery learning at applicable grade levels. For the two-thirds of instruction remaining, most of our daily core lessons are conceptually weak. Work needs to be done to strengthen conceptual learning and bring balance to instruction and assessment, giving equal time to conceptual understandings, procedural and fluency skills, and application of mathematical learning to everyday problem-solving situations.

The first place they are looking is at their math resource, enVision Math. Teachers now have time to explore and utilize activities and resources in enVision Math that will build the rigor that is lacking in daily core lessons. Outside resources will be utilized only as needed. All of this must be done carefully so the vertical connections linking grade level content are not destroyed. The means to these ends will be understanding and using the Progressions which are intended to be the bridge between the Standards and instructional materials, informing teacher preparation and curriculum organization.

The Power of the Core  

This team feels fortunate to have gained so much from the Iowa Core Math Standards, and they recognize they are better teachers because this work. To ensure their children receive an excellent education, they know they can no longer see themselves as grade-level islands. "The Progressions are the heart of the Standards," they advocate, "and upholding the related ideas and conceptual links between grade levels is crucial to helping our students learn math at higher levels." The Progressions rely on interdependence among grade levels. Teachers can no longer think of students as "my students" for only the short time a student is in his or her classroom. Students in every grade are "our students," and teachers must own learning in every grade level.  

Marshalltown's Commitment 

Through professional learning, Marshalltown recognizes they must strive to ensure all K-6 math teachers understand the experiences and critical knowledge students acquire in all grades. This will ensure instruction not only builds on what students have already learned, but also adds to their skills and prepares them for learning in future grades.

The Marshalltown Community School District is committed to this work. "We believe realignment of our math instruction to the high expectations set forth in the Iowa Core will reverse trends and help students increase proficiency as they progress to upper grades."

Iowa ASCD and ISEA are collaborating to offer a hands-on day of learning.  Join us in learning with practitioners across the state and leave with information, ideas, tools, strategies and networking opportunities for implementation of the Iowa Core in your classroom.

• Teaching for Understanding - the Curriculum Strand:  What do all students need to learn, know, and be able to do?  How do we in our building/grade level connect our teaching with the students' learning expectations identified in the Core?
• Assessment for Learning - the Assessment Strand:  How do we know that students have learned?  How do we use assessments to assess and diagnose our students' progress in learning?  How do we adjust our instruction based on the results of the formative assessments as we implement the Core?
• Teaching for Learner Differences - Instruction Strand:  How do we plan and deliver instruction so that we meet the needs of all learners in our classroom?  How do we respond if students struggle or don't learn and how do we respond when students have already learned?  

• Online with a credit card:  https://regonline.com/builder/site/Default.aspx?EventID=1317768 
• Mail a check/purchase order with names of participants to Bridget A. Arrasmith, Room 123, Drake University School of Education, 3206 University, Des Moines, Iowa 50311
• Email including attached purchase order with names of participants to Bridget A. Arrasmith at bridget.arrasmith@drake.edu
• FAX purchase order with names of participants to Bridget A. Arrasmith at 515.271.2233. 

"When we're true to children's developmental needs and know which books to put in their hands, good things fall into place. The key is to focus on the children and the practices we know help them to read at each grade level," says Barbara Taylor, author of Catching Readers Grades 4-5. These foundational beliefs have been the focus of Barbara Taylor's career and inspired her to create the Early Intervention in Reading (EIR) process. After more than two decades of classroom practice and refinement, Barbara Taylor has translated her EIR process into the Catching Readers series (Grades K, 1,2,3, and 4-5).

Check out this book and others in the series, which is part of Nell Duke's Research-Informed Classroom.

Click here to review EIR's efficacy studies, research base, and teacher evaluations