This year, changes to the school district’s math curriculum are being initiated. After reviewing different curriculums, Shorewood School District decided on an approach that would bring higher achievement in math to all students.
“The changes we’re making to the math curriculum are specifically in 6th through 8th grade,” said Michael Joynt, Director of Curriculum and Instruction. “The biggest change we’re making is that we are adopting curriculum so that all students are on track to take algebra in eighth grade.”
Per the new curriculum, all students will take advanced sixth and seventh grade math classes, allowing them to progress faster. However, these updates will not change opportunities for further advancement.
“I think that a common misperception out there is that this curriculum adoption is eliminating advanced math, which isn’t true. We call it a ‘leveling up initiative,’ where instead of having two different tracks, we’re leveling up our expectations [for all kids],” Joynt said.
While most high school freshmen will now be on track to take geometry, Algebra I will still be an option.
“We know that we still have new students who come into the Shorewood School District who might not have had the same opportunities in sixth through eighth grade,” Joynt said. “And for students who are feeling like they need a bit more practice in algebra to be successful in geometry, that pathway will be available to them.”
For one thing, the changes were brought about by an awareness that middle school students were not achieving optimal math scores.
“The average performance for a Shorewood student in our elementary schools are students who are performing at like the 60 or 70th percentile nationwide, which told us that we could raise our expectations for what kids are capable of doing in middle school,” Joynt said.
Another factor in the decision was the observation that some students who stayed in normal math in sixth grade did not feel as though they had the potential to be capable mathematicians.
“The other thing we heard from students is that in sixth grade when we started separating students into an accelerated math class and sixth grade math class, is that it set kids’ mindsets of who they were as mathematicians,” Joynt said. “[They] would call it the ‘smart’ class and the ‘dumb’ class.”
Joynt expressed that the new curriculum should help to remedy this sense of inadequacy, since there will not be such a split in sixth grade.
“The biggest benefit for students is that we’re providing the opportunity for advanced mathematics to all students. We’re not creating a system where kids are placed into a pathway starting in sixth grade, which again seems kind of odd, that we would make a decision about which kids have the opportunity to take advanced level math as early as sixth grade,” Joynt said.
Additionally, students will still be able to enter advanced or double advanced math in high school, by taking a course over the summer or doubling up on mathematics. This way, more students will be able to take more advanced math classes, such as calculus, statistics, and applied mathematics. Previously, a student staying in grade-level math could only reach pre-calculus.
Joe Oleniczak, a high school math teacher who primarily teaches Algebra I, shared his perspective on the upcoming developments.
“As the only [Algebra I] teacher, it is a little scary,” Oleniczak said. “My sections are going away. So in terms of what’s going to happen to my classes going forward, it’s kind of a big question mark. I’m assuming more geometry classes, but it really just depends on what happens at the middle school.”
Although there are some unknowns regarding the impact of these changes at the high school level, Oleniczak expressed a positive outlook.
“Speaking for the high school level, it looks like a lot of the stuff we saw is going to be very, very beneficial for elementary and middle school level, but it was hard to see how it was going to come into play with the high school level,” Oleniczak said. “I’m hopeful that it’s going to come together well.”
The new curriculum emphasizes more student involvement in math, but Oleniczak is prepared.
“I’ve [always] been doing a lot of group work and exploratory and outside-the-box math,” Oleniczak said.
Kelly Steiner has worked as an intermediate schoolteacher for the Shorewood district for 22 years. As an experienced professional skilled in both the instruction of both science and mathematics, she finds these changes to be an improvement.
“It changes from the kind of math that I was taught, where the teacher demonstrates it and then the kids do problems,” Steiner said. “[We are] trying to make changes so that the kids are really doing the deep thinking and wrestling with an idea and they’re really becoming thinkers and doers of math,” Steiner said.
She shared that this updated curriculum is more student centered, where kids get to see, observe and solve mathematical challenges on their own in a collaborative environment, using seventh grade classes as an example.
“They’ve been studying reflections, and they’re using the tracing paper to reflect it,” Steiner said. “They’re going to reflect line segments or lines today, and they’re going to discover that if you reflect line segments or lines, you either get the same line or a parallel line. Whereas, I feel 5 years ago, we would have had a worksheet with pictures and been like, ‘these are parallel lines, this is a reflection.’
According to Steiner, this new approach allows the students to deep dive into problems themselves and find out the solutions independently, under the guidance of teachers.
“Because [students] are like ‘I turned it like this,’ and then their peers will be like, ‘well, what do you mean by turn?’ And the other would respond like, ‘oh, well, I did a rotation, but how is a rotation different from a reflection?’” Steiner said. “They’re using the words. They’re owning the words… so they’re actually acting as people act when they interact with mathematics in their lives.”
The new curriculum is a form of more collaborative, student-led learning where students of all academic performance work together instead of being divided into high level or low level courses. Research suggests that this is beneficial for both high achieving and struggling students, giving both of them the opportunity to contribute in each of their unique ways.
“As a teacher [I] personally feel that obviously this curriculum is super beneficial, [and] students also are positively responding to this curriculum,” Steiner said.