2nd Grade - Gateway 1

The instructional materials reviewed for Zearn Grade 2 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 section of the program.
• Each Zearn Mission includes assessments that hold students accountable for Grade 2 content. For example, Mission 3, Question 1 on the End-of-Module assessment addresses 2.NBT.3 by having students write numbers using expanded form, word form, and place value disks.
• Most Missions have a Mid-Module and End-of-Module assessment.

The instructional materials focus on grade-level content.

• Mission 7 Mid-Module Assessment assesses standards 2.NBT.5, 2.MD.8, and 2.MD.10. For instance, “Karen has 1 twenty-dollar bill, 2 ten-dollar bills, 4 five-dollar bills, and 8 one-dollar bills. (a.) How much money does Karen have? Write the answer using the $ or ¢ symbol. Explain your thinking using pictures, numbers, or words. ( b.) Karen buys a book for 12 dollars and a fruit smoothie for 4 dollars. Karen gives the cashier the twenty dollar bill. How much change will she receive? Write the answer using the $ or ¢ symbol. Explain your thinking using pictures, numbers, or words.”
• The Mission 5 assessment focuses on 2.OA.1 and 2.NBT.5-9. In the End-of-Module assessment students find solutions to two-digit addition problems by creating models, using place value, and explaining their thinking.
• Mission 8 Mid-Module Assessment assesses standards 2.G.1 and 2.G.3 as students recognize and draw shapes that have specific attributes. Students identify triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons, and cubes.

The instructional materials reviewed for Zearn Grade 2 meet the expectation for spending the majority of class time on the major clusters of each grade. For Grade 2 this includes the first two clusters of 2.OA and 2.MD and all of 2.NBT.

According to Missions and Standards Overview for Grade 2, the materials contain 8 Missions, 133 Lessons, and 36 Weeks, and there are 4 lessons per week.

• 6 of 8 Missions include one or more major clusters of Grade 2. Approximately 75 percent of the Missions focus on major work of the grade.
• 27 of the 36 Weeks of instruction are spent on major work of Grade 2, or approximately 75 percent of the year.
• There are a total of 133 Lessons, and approximately 105 Lessons focus on the major work of Grade 2 (or 79 percent of the Lessons).

The most representative perspective for this indicator is Weeks, with Zearn spending approximately 75 percent of instructional time on the major work of the grade.

The instructional materials reviewed for Zearn Grade 2 meet expectations that supporting content enhances focus and coherence simultaneously by engaging students in the major work of the grade.

During Independent Digital Lessons 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 Lessons and Teacher-Led Instruction students have multiple opportunities to engage with supporting standards connected to the major work of the grade.

• In Mission 3, Lessons 8 and 9 are found in Topic D, Modeling Base Ten Numbers within 1,000 using Money. Students connect money (2.MD.8) to the major work of place value as they trade dollar bills, ten dollar bills, and hundred dollar bills (2.NBT.1). In these lessons, the value of money is used to represent the relationship between three-digit numbers and place value.
• In Mission 6, Teacher-Led Instruction Small Group Lessons 1, 5, 10, and 18 use addition to support the building of arrays as the foundation for multiplication (2.OA.4). Zearn Independent Digital Lessons 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, and 12-15 also support the work of building arrays.
• During Mission 7 Length, Money and Data: students build an understanding of place value and addition within 100 as they work with 2.MD standards.
  • Lesson 10 fosters coherence in working with money (2.MD.8) while also supporting development of place value and addition within 100 (2.NBT.1 and 2.NBT.5) as students rearrange coins to represent values with the least number of coins or other given constraints.
  • Zearn Independent Digital Lessons 7 and 9-13 engage students with supporting content using the values of coins (2.MD.8) to enhance fluency with skip counting (2.NBT.2).

The instructional materials reviewed for Zearn Grade 2 do not 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 133 Independent Digital Lessons and Teacher-Led Instruction 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 2 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. 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 of Grade 2 and make applicable connections to past or future content. For example, the Mission 2 Summary states: “The concept of the unit is critical and helps us compress mathematics into a few big ideas. In Module 2, we’ll draw those critical connections between measurement units and our base ten system, setting kids up to deeply understand the relationship between tens and ones, just like meters and centimeters.”
• On the teacher home page for many Missions there is a box titled, "Foundational Digital Lessons.” This identifies which concepts from previous Topics and Lessons are connected to the current Topic. For example, Grade 2, Mission 3 provides links that connect to Grade 1, Mission 4 (G1M4) and Grade 1, Mission 6 (G1M6) as Foundational Digital Lessons.
• In early Missions, the Whole Group Fluency link identifies essential skills from previous grades on which the Topic builds. For example, in Mission 1, Whole Group Fluency Module 1, Topic A Foundations for Fluency with Sums and Differences Within 100, the teacher materials state the following: “In this first topic of Grade 2, students set the stage for fluency with sums and difference within 100 (2.OA.2) by focusing on three essential skills:
  1. Knowing the decompositions of any number within 10 (K.OA.3, 1.OA.6),
  2. Knowing partners up to 10 (K.OA.4),
  3. Knowing teen numbers as 10 + n (K.NBT.1, 1.NBT.2b)."
• 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 2 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, Counting and Place Value is shaped by 2.NBT.A and 2.MD.C. Within this Mission are the following Topics: Forming Base Ten Units of Ten, a Hundred, and a Thousand; Understanding Place Value Units of One, Ten, and a Hundred; Three-Digit Numbers in Unit, Numeral, Expanded, and Word Forms; Modeling Base Ten Numbers within 1,000 with Money; Modeling Numbers within 1,000 with Place Value Disks; Comparing Two Three-Digit Numbers; and Finding 1, 10, and 100 More or Less than a Number.
• Mission 5, Add and Subtract Big Numbers is shaped by 2.OA.A and 2.NBT.B. Within this Mission are the following Topics: Strategies for Adding and Subtracting within 1,000; Strategies for Composing Tens and Hundreds within 1,000; Strategies for Decomposing Tens and Hundreds within 1,000; and Student Explanations for Choice of Solution Methods.

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

• Mission 1, Lessons 6 and 8 connect 2.OA.A, 2.OA.B, and 2.NBT.B. There are multiple examples in the Mission where students have to work with addition and subtraction word problems with multi-digit numbers.
• Mission 2, Topic C, Lessons 6 and 7 connect 2.MD.A, 2.MD.B, and 2.OA.A. In both of these Lessons measurement is used to compare/contrast lengths of different objects, and students create equations.