3rd Grade - Gateway 1

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 3 partially meet expectations that supporting content enhances focus and coherence simultaneously by engaging students in the major work of the grade. Supporting standards are not always used to support major work of the grade and often appear in lessons with few connections to the major work of the grade.

Although some attempts to connect supporting work to major work are made, students can often complete problems aligned to supporting work without engaging in the major work of the grade.

• In Unit 2 Session 1.5 on Student Activity Book page 82, students answer problems about paper airplanes using a scaled pictograph. The questions connect supporting work (3.MD.3) with major work of the grade (3.OA.A and 3.OA.D). However, in Unit 2 Session 5, students make a scaled pictograph to represent data about the favorite sports of students. Student Activity Book page 81 states that students should use their pictographs to answer questions; however, students have the numbers represented in the pictograph listed in table form. As a result, the questions that could require students to engage in the major work of multiplication (3.OA.A) can instead be answered with subtraction (1.OA.1). Also, in Unit 2 Section 1.4 students solve problems with scaled bar graphs, but the problems require students to read the graph, add numbers, or subtract numbers, which are not major work of Grade 3.
• Unit 4 Investigation 3 focuses on standard 3.G.1. Sessions 3.1 and 3.2 require students to build and identify triangles; these Sessions are below grade-level and not connected to major work of Grade 3. Sessions 3.3 and 3.4 focus on 3.G.1, but no connection to major work of the grade is made. In Session 3.5, students continue to work with standard 3.G.1. Session 3.5 includes one assessment problem that has alignment to the major work standard 3.MD.7d. The one assessment problem (page A46 of the Assessment Sourcebook) requires students to find the area of a shape. The Sessions in Unit 4 Investigation 3 do not clearly connect the supporting work standard 3.G.1 to the major work of the grade.

Occasionally supporting standards are used to support the major work of the grade.

• In Unit 6, materials aligned with the supporting standard 3.G.2 support students developing understanding of fractions, 3.NF.A. In Session 1.2 students make and label fractions sets and consider whether two differently shaped sixths of the same whole are equal. In Session 1.4 students make one whole with combinations of halves, thirds, and sixths by using pattern blocks. In Sessions 1.7 students share brownies to identify fractional parts and fraction expressions.

The materials reviewed for Grade 3 partially meet the expectations for being consistent with the progressions in the Standards. In general, the materials develop according to the grade-by-grade progressions in the Standards, but content from future grades is not clearly identified. The materials provide extensive work with grade-level problems for most standards, but the materials do not relate grade-level concepts explicitly to prior knowledge from earlier grades.

The materials develop according to the grade-by-grade progressions in the Standards, but content from future grades is not clearly identified. Examples of unclear identification include:

• In Unit 2 students work with line plots. Questions guide students to discuss the shape of the data. The materials use terms like range, mode, and outliers, which are more closely aligned to 6.SP.B.
• In Unit 4 Session 2.5 students are finding the area of irregular shapes (6.G.1).
• In Unit 7 Session 2.4 students are asked to fluently add beyond 1000. The 3rd grade standard is for students to fluently add within 1000. In Session 3.6 students are asked to add and subtract monetary amounts in dollars and cents such as in the student activity book page 455 when students are asked how much change from various amounts ($0.47 from $1.00, $3.18 from $5.00, etc). The above-grade level content in these sessions is not identified as such and is treated as on-grade level.

The materials often give all students extensive work with grade-level problems.

• The materials have different types of practice for students during each lesson. There are Teaching Resources in the Resource Masters and Activities in the Student Activity Book which are both aids during lessons. There are Daily Practice and Homework pages in the Student Activity Book which are indicated to be session follow-ups that review and practice grade-level content.
• Recommendations for differentiation allow students to primarily work with grade-level tasks.
• The materials give students extensive work with most domains. However, 3.NF is found in Unit 6 in 13 sessions. Of these 13 sessions, eight sessions teach fractions as a part of an object or shape, three sessions demonstrate fractions on a number line, and two sessions ask students to represent fractions by drawing shape models. These sessions may not allow all students to develop understanding of fractions as numbers. 3.MD.A, tell time to the nearest minute and measure time intervals in minutes, is found in 19 Ten-Minute Math activities which may not provide enough explicit instruction or extensive practice with measuring time in intervals for all students.

The materials do not consistently relate grade-level concepts explicitly to prior knowledge from earlier grades. The scope and sequence found in the Implementing Investigations book gives some limited information relating to knowledge from earlier and future grades by listing major topics and which units in prior and future grades address those topics. Each unit has a “Connections: Looking Back” section at the beginning of the unit. Several units specifically refer to work from prior grades without providing explicit connections to specific standards.

• Unit 1 specifically says the unit builds on the work done in K-2 as students use knowledge of counting groups to work with equal-sized groups and rectangular arrays leading to an understanding of multiplication and division.
• Unit 2 describes how students will use learning from K-2 to represent data on bar and picture graphs with more than one-unit scales and on line graphs.
• Unit 3 states the unit builds on K-2 work with an understanding of place value to 1000, operations of addition and subtraction, and the properties of operations along with fluency in addition facts within 20 and adding and subtracting within 100.
• Unit 4 “builds on the work students have done in previous grades” in understanding the importance of standard units of measure and familiarity with measurement tools.
• Unit 6 refers back to work done in Grade 2 with understanding fractions and fraction notation and the idea that fractions represent part of a whole.