Not all standards should have equal priority. At every level in mathematics there are intricate, challenging, and necessary concepts that serve as prerequisites for the next level’s intricate, challenging, and necessary concepts. In order to help every student achieve success after high school both in the workforce and college we need to give them enough time to succeed in these major areas. The 2017 Kansas Math Standards were built out of the mathematics learning progressions, so priorities were chosen with an eye to the arc of big ideas in the Standards. A plan of instructional focus that respects the learning progressions in the Standards will strike a balance between the path to gaining math understanding and the endpoint of having acquired it.
By using the Grade Level Focus (GLF) documents to inform your instructional practice there could be an approximate 70-20-10 breakdown of time across the three levels, Major, Additional, and Supporting. These numbers are not hard numbers and will fluctuate given the material contained in the various clusters at each grade level. There are times that the content within the Major clusters for a grade level call for more than 70% of the instructional time. Likewise, there are times where there is very little material in the Supporting clusters thus calling for less than 20% of the instructional time. With this in mind, use the 70-20-10 breakdown as estimates in your planning time.
It is important to note that while the three levels are mutually exclusive in the sense that each cluster belongs to one and only one level, in classroom implementation, the levels can work together to support the priorities of the grade. For example, teachers can view the Additional and Supporting levels in relation to the Major level by pulling the lower-priority material into a lesson that is centrally about more important ideas or topics; e.g., pictographs in Grade 3 could be positioned in direct support of multiplication and two-step word problems.
The GLF Worksheet documents have been designed to assist districts in planning their instructional time around the three areas of focus. Feel free to edit these documents to meet the needs of your school/district.