1st Grade - Gateway 1

The instructional materials reviewed for Zearn Grade 1 meet the expectations for assessing grade-level content and, if applicable, content from earlier grades.

• Zearn has two components to the program: Independent Digital Lessons and Teacher-Led Instruction. The summative assessments are located in the Teacher-Led Instruction section of the program.
• Each Zearn Mission includes assessments that hold students accountable for Grade 1 content with one exception. Mission 6 assessments include questions that require first graders to work with coins and money items, including their names and values. The assessments align more closely to 2.MD.8.
• Most Missions have a Mid-Module and End-of-Module assessment.

The instructional materials focus on grade-level content.

• Mission 2, End of Unit Assessment Problem 4 includes 5 parts: “Mr. Baggy also has 9 birds, 15 snakes, and 12 turtles. a. Show the number of snakes as a ten and some ones with a number bond, a 5-group drawing, and a number sentence.” Standards addressed: 1.OA.1, 1.OA.2. 1.OA.3, and 1.OA.6.
• In Mission 4 the standards focus on place value, where students work with two-digit numbers, concrete drawing, and models (1.NBT.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6). The engagement with place value is evident in number 9 where students are asked to break apart two-digit numbers and complete addition and subtraction problems. Additionally, there are direct examples in question 6 for <, >, and = in comparing numbers by looking at place value. In the End-of-Module assessment, one question is: “Maria is having a party for 17 of her friends. She already invited some friends. She has 12 more invitations to send. How many friends has she already invited?”
• In Mission 6 students identify numbers in the tens and ones, along with adding and subtracting while looking at place value (1.OA.1). For example, “Ben has 18 pencils. Anton has 9 pencils. How many fewer pencils does Anton have then Ben?”

The instructional materials reviewed for Zearn Grade 1 meet the expectation for spending the majority of class time on the major clusters of each grade. For Grade 1 this includes all clusters within 1.OA and 1.NBT along with 1.MD.A.

According to Missions and Standards Overview for Grade 1, the materials contain 6 Missions, 119 Lessons, and 36 Weeks, with 4 lessons per week.

• 5 of the 6 Missions include one or more major clusters of Grade 1. Approximately 83 percent of the Missions focus on major work of the grade.
• 33 of the 36 weeks of instruction are spent on major work of Grade 1, or approximately 92 percent of the year.
• There are a total of 119 Lessons, and approximately 103 Lessons focus on major work of Grade 1 (or 87 percent of the Lessons).

The most representative perspective for this indicator is Weeks, with Zearn spending approximately 92 percent of instructional time on the major work of the grade.

The instructional materials reviewed for Zearn Grade 1 meet expectations that supporting content enhances focus and coherence simultaneously by engaging students in the major work of the grade.

During Independent Digital Practice students develop fluency in Number Gyms and Blasts, engage in guided practice in Math Chats, and do independent practice in the Tower of Power sections of the lessons. In Teacher-Led Instruction teachers present Whole Group Fluency, Small Group Lessons, and Whole Group Word problems to engage students with content. In both the Independent Digital Practice and Teacher-Led Instruction students have multiple opportunities to engage with supporting standards connected to the major work of the grade.

• In Mission 3, Lesson 10 students organize, represent, and interpret data (supporting standard 1.MD.4) connected to major standard 1.OA.1 as they use addition and subtraction to solve word problems.
  • During Teacher-Led Instruction, students collect and organize data. Students are asked several questions about the data that involve counting. Students are also asked find the sum of two categories in the following question: “What is the total number of students who like soccer or basketball the best?”
  • During the Math Chat students organize, represent, and interpret data and use the data to represent, solve, and answer problems using addition and subtraction. For example, students count the number of pink, orange, and blue cubes. Students are then asked to "(w)rite an addition expression to represent the number of Zearners that picked pink or orange" and then write an equation to find the total number of cubes.
  • In the Tower of Power students use data to represent and solve problems using addition and subtraction.
• In Mission 3, Lesson 12 students are asked questions that connect supporting standard 1.MD.4 to major work, specifically standard 1.OA.2. For example, students are asked: “How many more students would _______ (category) need to have the same amount as _______ (category)? Tell your partner how you figured it out.” Students use addition or subtraction to find the solution and explain their thinking.

The instructional materials reviewed for Zearn Grade 1 meet the expectation for having an amount of content that is viable for one school year in order to foster coherence between grades.

The Independent Digital Lessons are broken up into four main components: Fluency, Guided Practice, Independent Practice, and Bonus. The components have different titles depending on the lesson and how the student is progressing through the program. The Teacher-Led Instruction is broken into six sections: Whole Group Fluency, Small Group Lessons, Whole Group Word Problems, Optional Homework, Assessments, and Optional Problem Sets.

The suggested time frame for completing the 119 Independent Digital Lessons and Teacher-Led Small Group Lessons is approximately 36 weeks. This provides material for 180 days. A typical day consists of 15 minutes of Whole Group Fluency and Word Problems, 30 minutes of individual digital content and 30 minutes of small-group, direct teacher instruction. There are also 12 summative assessments in the Zearn program.

The instructional materials reviewed for Zearn Grade 1 meet the expectations for being consistent with the progressions in the Standards.

The materials identify and explicitly connect grade-level work to prior or future grades. Users of the materials will find these connections throughout the materials. The materials give all students extensive work with grade-level problems. The following are places that demonstrate the progressions of the Standards and the connections from grade to grade:

• Each Mission has a Summary. This Summary explains how the lessons work through the progression for Grade 1 and make applicable connections to past or future content. For example, the Mission 4 Summary states: “This mission builds on the foundations of counting on, decomposing, and place value that were established in Mission 1 and Mission 2, and gives us the opportunity to work with numbers up to 40. Kids learn a lot of new strategies to identify tens and ones, compare, add, and subtract up to 40. Balance all this new content by applying what they’re learning with the application problem each day.”
• In early Missions, the Whole Group Fluency link identifies essential skills from previous grades on which the Topic builds. For example, in Mission 3, Whole Group Fluency, Topic A Indirect Comparison in Length Measurement, the teacher materials state the following: “Grade 1 Mission 3 opens in Topic A by extending students’ Kindergarten experiences with direct length measurement to indirect measurement whereby the length of one object is used to compare that of two other objects (1.MD.1).“
• Students have extensive work with practice problems. Students have daily fluency practice, guided practice, and independent practice when using the digital lessons and when working in small groups with the teacher.

Overall, Lesson summaries identify and explain connections between previous grade level, current grade level, and future content including the Lesson, Mission, and/or grade where the content appears.

The instructional materials reviewed for Zearn Grade 1 meet the expectations for fostering coherence through connections at a single grade.

Materials include learning objectives that are visibly shaped by CCSSM cluster headings.

• Mission 3, Topic B, Standard Length Units, is related to 1.MD.A: Measure lengths indirectly and by iterating length units.
• Mission 6, Topic C, Lesson 10 is related to 1.NBT.C: Use place value understanding and properties of operations to add and subtract. This lesson focuses on number work with tens as students add and subtract multiples of 10 from multiples of 10.

Materials include problems and activities that sometimes serve to connect two or more clusters in a domain, or in two or more domains, where connections are natural and important.

• Mission 1, Topic B, Counting on from Embedded Numbers, connects 1.OA.A and 1. OA.C. During this Topic, students use both concrete and pictorial situations to describe the decompositions of 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, and the “put together” situation is highlighted.
• Mission 1, combines 1.MD.A with 1.MD.C, using data to continue work on iterating length units.
• Mission 3, Topic D, Data Interpretation, connects 1.OA and 1.MD. In this Topic students collect, sort, and organize data into graphs and ask and answer questions and word problems about the data set. For example, in Lesson 13 students are organizing their data and then answering questions such as, “How many more votes do we need if we want to make the number of votes for building the fort the same as the number of votes for making the snowman?”
• Mission 5, Topic D, Lesson 11 makes a connection between 1.G.A and 1.MD.B in working with telling time to the half hour using the language and pictorial representation for “half past.” Lesson 13 makes this connection again in clocks with only 12, 3, 6, and 9 showing; but there is not any discussion with fourths or quarters, so this is a missed opportunity.