Kindergarten - Math

Kindergarten students in SFUSD engage in 50-60 minutes of daily math instruction that provides a strong sense of agency and supports their identities as mathematicians. Through play and exploration, math lessons develop conceptual understandings of composing and decomposing numbers and shapes (putting numbers and shapes together and pulling them apart). Kindergarten students also develop procedural fluency within 5. 
 

During math instruction, students are engaged in a number of instructional contexts and routines: math talks, counting and calendar routines, and learning stations. Math talks feature subitizing (recognizing a number of objects without counting) and flexibility with numbers. In addition, engaging in collaborative tasks and games will result in joyful math learners.  

• Knowing number names and the count sequence.
• Counting to tell the number of objects.
• Comparing numbers.
• Understanding addition as putting together and adding to, and understanding subtraction as taking apart and taking from.
• Working with the numbers 11–19 to gain foundations for place value. 

• Identifying and describing shapes.
• Analyzing, comparing, creating, and composing shapes.

• Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them
• Reason abstractly and quantitatively
• Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others
• Model with mathematics
• Use appropriate tools strategically
• Attend to precision
• Look for and make use of structure
• Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning
   

• Mistakes help us grow.
• We talk to each other about math.
• We can show math ideas in different ways.

Math Talks are teacher-led, student-centered techniques for building math thinking and academic discourse. They allow for multiple entry points and encourage students to value the thinking of others so that they can build a better understanding of their own thinking. Math Talks support students in developing their mental math skills.

The Three Read Protocol is one way to do a close read of a complex math word problem or task. This strategy includes reading a math scenario three times with a different goal each time. The first read is to understand the context. The second read is to understand the mathematics. The third read is to elicit inquiry questions based on the scenario.

Groupwork feedback is a strategy to publicly recognize the class norms and math focus of students as they work in groups. Group work is loosely defined to include partners, trios, or larger group sizes. The teacher takes public notes about the quality of the group work and the quality of the mathematical discussions. This feedback should focus on the specific nature of groupwork interactions as well as target mathematics of the lesson rather than general positive reinforcement.

Daily routines are the cornerstone of the mathematics curriculum in the early primary grades. This structure provides opportunities for deeper learning that requires students to continuously revisit potentially abstract concepts in a concrete context. Although the basic routine structures will stay the same throughout the year, the complexity and focus will change and develop over time. 

Learning stations are an activity-based structure that provides students with opportunities for student-led engagement with, or extensions of, previously taught concepts. Stations can also be used to explore new manipulatives/tools before they are used in a formal lesson. You can use this time to observe students, pull small groups for targeted instruction or formative assessment, or teach the lessons in small groups.