Rationale
I teach fourth grade and serve as a mathematics Academic Architect for the school district. As an Academic Architect I work with the math department to develop the grade 4 pacing and curricular resources for the district.
My school district uses Eureka Math (the Virginia version, which is only slightly different from the Eureka Engage NY version). Most of the changes occur in the fluency component of each lesson. The district develops a pacing calendar and common assessments that teachers across the district follow. The pacing calendar shows which lesson teachers teach each day and omits lessons that do not align with the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOLs). Additional lessons are added to support the alignment to the state-mandated curriculum. The district’s expectation is that teachers use the district’s curated resources and stay within five days of the recommended pacing. This curriculum unit is designed with these expectations in mind. The ideas and strategies can be infused into a problem-solving lesson or application problem and should be useful for teachers who have similar parameters to follow.
I developed this curriculum unit not only to support students as they tackle single and multi-step word problems, but also in a way that will work seamlessly with the district’s curricular resources. This curriculum unit is designed to help students analyze word problems and categorize them based on similarities and differences. The word problems in Eureka Math fit the problem types described in the Common Core State Standards Taxonomies.4 As students work with word problems, they will begin to recognize the single-step components that make up the multi-step problem, thus enabling them to solve these more difficult problems. Virginia uses a version of the taxonomies in the Standards of Learning.
Identifying patterns, similarities, and schema among word problems foster students’ problem-solving skills and algebraic thinking. This curriculum unit is designed as a companion to the curriculum unit I developed in 2017 titled Understanding Problems: Using Bar Models with Common Core Taxonomies,5 which explains and provides examples of all the problem types.
The unit will examine word problems within the grade 4 Eureka Virginia curriculum for schemas. A feature of this unit will be a framework to guide students’ identification of schemas through mathematical discourse. See below for discussion of the term “schema”.
I plan to lay out the argument that it is beneficial to teach students to recognize and apply schemas as a segue into algebra. By having students discuss, create, and categorize word problems, they will look for patterns and develop their algebraic thinking and algebraic readiness. “Problem solving is a relevant and significant perspective and context through which to introduce students to algebra.”6
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