The Connecticut State Department of education has adapted the 2020-2021 Priority Instructional Content in ELA/Literacy and Mathematics to assist in guiding the important work of addressing mathematics education for the coming school year. As the 2020–2021 school year approaches, mathematics educators must name content priorities and support focus on critical on-grade-level material. This webpage provides a searchable interface for the 20-21 priority content, with the text of the recommendation for each Common Core State Standard. Each standard is connected to an assessment target in Claim 1 (Concepts and Procedures) of the Smarter Balanced summative assessment. Smarter balanced also provides Interim Assessment Blocks (IABs) and Focused Blocks that can be used to asses a limited number of targets. If an IAB or focused block is currently available to assess a target, it is listed in the drop down for the associated standards.
The Connecticut Core Standards for Mathematics are based upon a progression of learning. It is essential to identify the pre-requisite knowledge needed for student success on grade level content based upon these progressions. The Coherence Map is a tool that assists in identifying gaps in a student's knowledge by tracing a standard back through its logical pre-requisites. These skills should be strategically taught right before the connected unit of study or incorporated as spiral review or as part of instructional routines and procedures. Teaching these skills as connected to grade-level content deepens students' mathematical understanding. This document links to the coherence map for each standard. In addition, standards are tagged and searchable by their emphasis: Major work of the grade, supporting work, or additional standard. These labels indicate which standards should take the bulk of the school year. Students should spend the large majority of their time on the major work of the grade. Supporting work and, where appropriate, additional work can engage students in the grade-level content.
The following words are used in the recommendation for school year 20-21. While these terms are used broadly as defined below, there may be places where the term only applies to part of the standard. This document has specific guidance for each standard which explains how to combine, eliminate or emphasize the standard.
| Combine | Give less time and attention to individual lessons by merging a group of lessons in the same domain. |
| Limit | Cut back on the number of brief, repetitious practice problems that would normally be assigned to students for these topic(s). |
| Incorporate | Draw in prior grade-level skills and understandings to support students in engaging successfully with grade-level content. Base decisions related to this additional support on analyses of prior-grade-level scope and sequence and/or factors related to the district-, school-, or classroom-level context. |
| Integrate | Merge content from the same grade level with other content that has been explicitly specified. |
| Emphasize/Prioritize | Elevate the importance of one or more standards, concepts, strategies, or problem types above others. Emphasizing is a matter of giving stronger weight to specified things in the cluster or standard, not a matter of limiting entirely to the specified things. |
| Reduce | Lessen the normal emphasis on specific standards, concepts, strategies, or problem types. |
| None | Teach the standard without modifications. |