Washington State Algebra I Mathematics Standards Transition Document
This document serves as one guide to translate between the 2008 Washington State Standards for Mathematics and the Common Core State
Standards for Mathematics.
The Standards for Mathematical Practice describes varieties of expertise that mathematics educators at all levels should seek to develop in their
students. These standards should be integrated throughout the teaching and learning of the content standards of the Common Core State
Standards.
1. Make sense of problems and persevere in
solving them.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
3. Construct viable arguments and critique the
reasoning of others.
4. Model with mathematics.
5. Use appropriate tools strategically.
6. Attend to precision.
7. Look for and make use of structure.
8. Look for and express regularity in
repeated reasoning.
With full implementation of the Common Core State Standards for mathematics in Geometry, instructional time should focus on six critical
areas:
1) establishing congruence criteria and using triangle congruence as a foundation for the development of formal proof; and applying
reasoning to complete geometric constructions;
2) building a formal understanding of similarity; identifying criteria for similarity of triangles, using similarity to solve problems, and
applying similarity in right triangles to understand right triangle trigonometry, with particular attention to special right triangles and the
Pythagorean Theorem;
3) extending two-dimensional and three-dimensional experience to include informal explanations of circumference, area and volume
formulas; applying knowledge of two-dimensional shapes to consider the shapes of cross –sections and the result of rotating a twodimensional object about a line;
4) using a rectangular coordinate system to verify geometric relationships including properties of special triangles and quadrilaterals,
slopes of parallel and perpendicular lines, and connecting the geometric and algebraic definitions of the parabola;
5) proving basic theorems about circles, studying relationships among segments on chords, secants, and tangents as an application of
similarity, using the distance formula to write the equation of a circle when given the radius and the coordinates of its center, drawing
the graph of an equation of a circle in the coordinate plane, and applying techniques for solving quadratic equations to determine
intersections between lines and circles or parabolas and between two circles; and
6) using the languages of set theory to compute and interpret theoretical and experimental probability for compound events, attending to
mutually exclusive events, independent events, and conditional probability.
Common Core standards includes 10 recommendations about professional development related to Common Core. Some recommendations in the resolution call for teacher and administrator engagement in planning professional learning, resources including time for professional learning, job-embedded professional learning, and effective models of learning (2011). In his plan for reform, Dennis Van Roekel, president of NEA, states, “To promote and nurture effective teaching, the profession should offer quality training, well-designed career paths, time to work together on the best ways to help students, quality evaluations that help teachers in their development, professional development based on identified needs, and fair accountability processes” (2011, p. 5).
The National Governors’ Association calls for states to use student achievement data to measure the effectiveness of teacher professional “The most powerful strategy school systems have at their disposal to improve teacher effectiveness is professional development,” asserts Stephanie Hirsh, executive director of Learning Forward.5 development, create research-based standards for professional development, use teacher evaluation and student achievement data to focus individual professional development, and establish systems to incentivize professional development (Grossman, 2009).
The National Association of State Boards of Education (2011) asserts, “For the transition [to college- and career ready standards] to be successful, both horizontal and vertical alignment between education entities must occur. Current teachers must receive extensive professional development on the Common Core standards, curricular materials, and strategies on teaching these standards that now require students to delve deeper and develop critical thinking and analytical skills that previous standards did not adequately address. As an initial step, states have been holding educator academies, training sessions, and other information sessions throughout their states to inform current teachers about the new standards. Continuous professional learning must occur for all teachers on how to effectively teach the contents of the Common Core to diverse learners to provide students with the knowledge and skills to be successful upon high school graduation.
Meet The Promise Of Content Standards: Professional Learning Required
Common Core Resources
Like a superhero, the U.S. Library of Congress has just swooped in and unveiled an enormous new (and free!) resource that’s all about the Common Core. It’s located athttp://www.loc.gov/teachers and worth checking out. You can now do a ‘Search By Standards‘ query which lets you do exactly that. Select your state, grade level, and subject for a list of Library of Congress teaching materials aligned to those standards. Or, once you’ve found a lesson plan or primary source set that you’d like to use, one click will show you which of your standards that particular item meets.
Find Library of Congress lesson plans and more that meet Common Core standards, state content standards, and the standards of national organizations. Click here to start your CCSS search.
ELA Standards Literacy in History, Social Studies, Science & Technical Subjects
Examples of What the Standards Require
The standards insist that instruction in reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language be a shared responsibility within the school. The grades 6–12 standards are divided into two sections, one for ELA and the other for history/social studies, science, and technical subjects. This interdisciplinary approach to literacy is based on research indicating that students who are college and career ready must be proficient in reading complex text from many disciplines. To support this, the CCSS for ELA:
Link to a PDF of what students should know and be able to do.
Common Core Reference Collection: Common Core implementation plans, transition guides, assessment tasks, exemplars and curriculum, indexed from across the U.S.
Common Core Aligned Resources: K-12 resources aligned to the Common Core State Standards. Add your resource quality ratings and comments.
