8th Grade Report Overview

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 8 partially meet the expectations for alignment to CCSSM.

While the Grade 8 materials passed Gateway 1's review of focus and coherence, the instructional materials did not pass Gateway 2's review of rigor and the MP.

On focus and coherence, the instructional materials assess only the material required for Grade 8 and previous grades. More than 65% of the year is focused on the major work for Grade 8 of 8.EE.A, 8.EE.B, 8.EE.C, 8.F.A, 8.F.B, 8.G.A and 8.G.C. In Grade 8 there are a few times that the supporting work enhances the understanding of the major clusters. The program can be taught in 164 days. The program overview guide explicitly shows where the standards are taught and where previous standards are used to enhance new learning. The program has many components to give all students extensive work with grade-level problems. The CCSSM are visibly listed on the student pages and in the teacher's edition. The work in each unit is specific to that unit's topic. There are few connections made between units and concepts.

Concerning rigor and the mathematical practices, conceptual understanding is not attended to by setting explicit expectations for understanding or interpreting. Each lesson is launched with a real-world situation but they often focus on practicing application and not on building conceptual understanding. There isn't enough practice to build fluency. The enrichment project for each unit is the major resource for application with multi-steps. Within the lessons there are many real-world type problems but very few that are multi-step problems. There is an attempt to balance conceptual and procedural work. There are not enough problems to support developing fluency, particularly in solving linear equations in one variable and estimating solutions by graphing the equations. The materials reviewed for Grade 8 do not meet the expectations for practice-content connections. While the MPs are included and labeled in the Launch of each lesson and the focus question, they are not identified in the in-class teaching notes and is missing in other areas of the curriculum. Problems are too simple with too much scaffolding to enrich the mathematics for students. A teacher who is not familiar with the MP standards would not be able to use the information given on the individual lessons to educate the students on how to use the MPs to assist in solving a math problem. The materials suggest that certain mathematical practices are used, when they clearly are not. On other lessons, they are used well. There is too much inconsistency within this series in their use. Materials have students constructing arguments through certain routine problems such as reasoning, reflecting, writing and error analysis. The attempt is there to prompt students to construct viable arguments with some of the questions used in each lesson, but the ability to have true mathematical discourse in the lessons is not strong. This series does not meet the standard for explicitly attending to the specialized language of mathematics. It often uses vocabulary that is not precise and does not allow for the student to be completely immersed in the language of mathematics.