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Mathematics

3 students sitting on the classroom floor doing math together

Director of Mathematics 

Faiza Khan

Email:
fkhan@medford.k12.ma.us

The K-12 Medford Public Schools Mathematics Curriculum reflects and supports the vision of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and the Massachusetts State Curriculum Framework for Mathematics (2017), the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System. The mathematics programs adopted by the district are based on the district’s K-12 philosophy that:

  • Math class is about learning and not rote memorization
  • Mistakes are valuable and give a reason to reflect
  • Questions and their timing are important to have deeper learning
  • Depth is achieved through interesting and engaging mathematical problems that encourage connections, conversations and modeling.

While the mathematics content standards change from one grade to the other, the mathematics practice standards stay the same for grades K -12 and are as follows:

  • 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.

Curriculum Overview

The goal of mathematics instruction throughout the elementary grades is to have students develop both deep and complex understanding of mathematical concepts and skills and procedures they can use to solve problems accurately. Mathematics instruction emphasizes sense-making, problem solving, reasoning, and understanding relationships. Throughout each grade, our math program develops students mathematical habits-of-mind and ways of thinking like a mathematician.