The instructional materials reviewed for the Grade 3 Math in Focus do not meet the expectation for this criterion, due to assessing similarity, congruence, and transformation. Additionally, there are several instances where future grade-level work is covered and assessed.

• In Chapter 2, questions 4, 5, 10 and 11 assess rounding multi-digit numbers, which is a Grade 4 standard.
• In the Chapter 3 assessment, all questions assess adding over 1000, which is a Grade 4 standard.
• In Chapter 4, questions 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 assess subtracting with numbers over 1000, which is a Grade 4 standard.
• In Chapter 5, questions 2, 3, 5, 6 and 8 assess adding and subtracting over 1000, which is a Grade 4 standard.
• In Chapter 7, questions 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 assess multiplication of multi-digit numbers, which is a Grade 4 standard.
• In Chapter 8, questions 2, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 assess remainders, which is a Grade 4 standard.
• In Chapter 9, questions 1 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 11 and 12 assess multiplication of multi-digit numbers, which is a Grade 4 standard. The Chapter 9 assessment also has students using procedures to solve division, when conceptual understanding should be emphasized at this level.
• In Chapter 11, questions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10 assess conversion of units, which is a Grade 4 standard.
• In Chapter 12, questions 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11 and 12 assess conversion of units, which is a Grade 4 standard.
• In Chapter 14, questions 4, 6 and 8 assess equivalent fractions with different numerators and denominators, which is a Grade 4 standard.
• In Chapter 17, questions 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 14 and 15 assess line segments and parallel lines, which is a Grade 4 standard.
• In Chapter 18, questions 4, 5, 10 and 11 assess lines of symmetry, which is a Grade 4 standard. In chapter 18, question 3 assesses congruence, which is a Grade 8 standard. Questions 8 and 9 assess flips, turns and slides, which is also a Grade 8 standard.
• In Chapter 19, questions 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 assess area of special quadrilaterals and polygons, which is a Grade 6 standard.

*Evidence updated 10/27/15

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 3 do not meet the expectations for spending the large majority of class time on the major clusters of the grade. Overall, the instructional materials allocate too much instructional time to clusters of standards that are not major work of Grade 3 and on future grade level work.

• Grade 3 contains 19 chapters.
• Eleven out 19 chapters (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 19) or about 58% of the time is focused on the major work of the grade.
• Seven out of 19 chapters (1, 2, 3, 4, 13, 17 and 18) or about 37% of the time is focused on the supporting work of the grade, which is treated separately from the major work of the grade.
• Additionally, because of the amount of future grade level work introduced and assessed it takes away from the major work of the grade.
• Sixty-three out of the 112 instructional lessons/days are spent on the major work of the grade. This represents approximately 56% of the instructional time. Assessment time was not included in these calculations.

There is limited supporting content in the Grade 3 Math in Focus materials. When the supporting content is present, it does not enhance the focus and coherence by engaging students in the major work.

• Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 13, 17 and 18 represent supporting and additional work of the grade.
• The content in chapters 1-4 are treated separately and do not support the major work of the grade.
• In chapter 13, lesson 13.1 briefly supports the major work of multiplication by using skip-counting on the graphs.
• The content in chapters 17 and 18 are treated separately from the major work of the grade level.

The amount of content designated for Grade 3 Math in Focus is not viable for one school year. Overall, the amount of time needed to complete the lessons is not appropriate for a school year of approximately 170-190 days.

• There are 74 lessons in the program, which covers only 93 days of instruction.
• Only 63 of those instructional days focus on the major work of the grade.
• This falls approximately well short of the typical school year.

Grade 3 Math in Focus materials are not consistent with the progressions in the standards. Content is not clearly identified, there are not extensive grade-level problems and concepts are not explicitly related to prior knowledge.

Materials do not develop according to the grade-by-grade progression in the standards. Prior or future content is not clearly identified.

• Chapter 1 does not address any Grade 3 content standards, and only addresses MP.
• Chapters 3 and 4 are focused on addition and subtraction to 10,000. The CCSSM only states that a Grade 3 student needs to be able to add and subtract within 1,000.
• In chapter 7, lessons 7.2 and 7.3 address standards that are not supposed to be covered until Grade 5.
• Chapter 8, lesson 8.2 introduces division with a remainder which is a Grade 4 CCSSM. In lessons 8.4 and 8.5, division procedures are used, conceptual understanding should be emphasized until Grade 6.
• In chapter 11, length-a Grade 4 standard- is covered. Also in chapter 11, conversion of units is presented, which is a Grade 5 standard.
• Chapter 12 addresses length and conversion. Length is a Grade 4 standard and conversion of units is a Grade 5 standard.
• Chapter 13, bar graphs, are Grade 2 CCSSM and line plots belong in Grade 4 CCSSM. Neither of these are labeled as connected to prior year's work or to current year's standards to future year's work.
• In Chapter 15, length is a Grade 4 standard. In chapter 16, conversion of time, time intervals and elapsed time are covered, which are Grade 4 standards.
• Chapter 17 covers angles and lines, which are Grade 4 CCSSM.
• Chapter 18, the vocabulary for lesson 18.2-"flip," "slide," "turn," "rotate," and "congruent"-are more appropriate for Grade 8. Similarly, lesson 18.3 uses "symmetry," which is a Grade 4 standard.
• The teachers and student editions do not state that standards that are taught are for future or previous grade levels.
• The skills trace (found at the front of each chapter) and the chapter planning guide (found in each chapter) do not include notations explaining which work is off grade or how this work relates to grade level work.

Materials do not give all students extensive work with grade-level problems.

• Grade 3 Math in Focus has 75 lessons over about 93 days.
• Thirty-seven lessons or about 49% of the time is spent on grade-level problems.
• Thirty-eight lessons or about 51% is spent on work other than grade-level problems.
• On a positive note, each chapter contains at least four guided practice problems and at least 10 independent practice problems.

Materials do not explicitly relate grade-level concepts to prior knowledge from earlier grades.

• Each chapter contains an initial lesson called "Recall Prior Knowledge." In this lesson, students are recalling prior knowledge from earlier grades and chapters; however, it does not directly trace back to the skills and concepts in the standards. For example, chapter 13 states "students learned to collect data in a tally chart. Students showed and understood the same set of data in a bar graph;" however, the standard 1.MD.C.4 states "organize, represent and interpret data with up to three categories; ask and answer questions about the total number of data points, how many in each category and how many more or less are in one category than in another." If prior knowledge were aligned to the standards and not the text, then the CCSSM concepts would be explicit. Instead skills and strategies from series are explicitly covered in the prior knowledge section.
• Chapter 18 traces prior knowledge from chapter 17 in Grade 3 instead of tracing the standard 1.G.A.2.
• Chapter 12 shows procedures for all operations in the prior knowledge pages and conceptual understanding should be emphasized.
• Chapter 16, the prior knowledge section has students telling time to the nearest minute. In Grade 2, students should only have learned to tell time to the nearest 5 minutes making the prior knowledge off grade level.
• The teacher's and student editions do not state when skills and concepts are not at grade level or assessing off grade-level standards.

Materials do not foster coherence through connections at a single grade level. The learning objectives are not clearly linked to the CCSSM cluster headings and the material rarely connects two or more clusters in a domain.

Materials do not include learning objectives that are visibly shaped by CCSSM cluster headings.

• There is a section in the teacher's edition that includes CCSSM correlations, however the alignment is not always correct.
• In chapter 12, the objective is to draw bar models to solve one-step measurement problems. The use of bar models is a strategy and is not mentioned in the CCSSM.
• In addition, there are many chapters that do not address learning objectives in the cluster headings of major work for Grade 3 (e.g., chapters 1 and 17).

Materials do not include problems and activities connecting two or more clusters in a domain or two or more domains in a grade.

• The chapter planning guide has several references in each lesson from two or more clusters and/or two or more domains. However, the activities in the lessons not always align to the stated standards.
• For example, in chapter 14, lesson 1 states it aligns to both geometry and 3.G and 3.NF. When looking at the lesson, it does not ask students to understand fraction as a number on the number line or represent fractions on a number line diagram as stated in the standard.
• Scaled bar graphs, chapter 13, could have been connected with multiplication and division.
• A positive example of meeting this criteria is in chapter 12, lesson 1, where 3.MD is connected to 3.NBT and 3.OA.