Elementary Mathematics Curriculum
“…Students have different abilities, needs, and interests, yet everyone needs to be able to use mathematics in his or her personal life, in the workplace, and in further study. All students deserve an opportunity to understand the power and beauty of mathematics. Students need to learn a new set of mathematics basics that enable them to compute fluently and to solve problems creatively and resourcefully…” NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.)
Our goal at the Bruno M. Ponterio Ridge Street School is that our students leave us with a deeper understanding of mathematics, not just an understanding of mathematics on the surface level.
enVision MATH as implemented in grades K-5 in the 2014-2015 school year. enVision MATH is directly aligned to the New York State Learning Standards and fully embraces the focus and coherence. A focused and coherent mathematics program like enVision MATH provides in-depth instruction on of important categories, giving students a better understanding of mathematics content. It extends focus and coherence by making explicit the BIG IDEAS in mathematics that students need to know and by showing how these ideas are related. A BIG IDEA in mathematics is a statement of an idea that is central to learning mathematics; it links numerous smaller ideas into a coherent whole. BIG IDEAS run across critical areas and grades in the enVision MATH Program; they connect across content topics, and this is one reason they are “big.” To convey the power of BIG IDEAS to students, they are translated into student-friendly Essential Questions presented at the beginning of each topic. Essential Questions focus students’ attention on what they will be able to do and understand at the end of a topic.
Research says that for all content areas, conceptual understanding, computational fluency, and problem-solving skills are each essential and mutually reinforcing, influencing performance on such varied tasks as estimation, word problems, and computation (National Mathematics Advisory Panel). enVision MATH provides problem solving skills and strategies taught in problem-solving lessons, the problem solving process, problem-based interactive learning, and a variety of problem-solving exercises.
enVision MATH provides frequent assessment opportunities – at the start of a year, at the start of a topic, during a lesson, at the end of a lesson, at the end of the topic, and at the end of the year. It also provides solid and effective intervention and differentiation that makes it easy for us to respond to students’’ individual needs.
STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) Education encourages a curriculum that is built around active engagement of students in problem solving. enVisionMATH offers our students the opportunities to use mathematics to solve real-life problems in science. These opportunities are highlighted so teachers can easily find them throughout the units of study and can share them with our students.