GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

This year, Jackie Xuereb is teaching her sixth grade math students how to add and subtract fractions with unlike denominators. But next year, new standards will call for students to know that information before they enter her class.

Xuereb, a sixth grade math teacher at Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School, is among the city math teachers preparing to swap the state’s learning standards for the Common Core this fall. And like many, she is struggling to keep the two sets of standards straight as the new standards move some topics an entire grade-level earlier than in the past.

“A lot of what used to be sixth grade standards are now taught in fifth grade,” Xuereb said. “I feel that I’m going to have to be really mindful and cognizant of this in my planning for next year. The kids are going to have these huge gaps.”

New York City piloted the Common Core standards in 100 schools last year and asked all teachers to practice working with them this year. Next year, every teacher in every elementary and middle school will be expected to teach to the new standards, and state tests will be based on them. Department of Education officials have argued that a full-steam-ahead approach is required because moving slowly would deprive students of the Common Core’s long-overdue rigor.

But some say that this approach will pose a special challenge for math teachers, particularly in the middle school years, as students begin learning advanced concepts that build on each other sequentially. William Schmidt, an education professor at Michigan State University who has researched the effect of the Common Core on learning, said students who miss a lesson the first time around are at risk of missing the concept entirely.

“If it’s done really carefully it might work, but that would be my worry, that this would require fairly careful thought about how to do that across the grades so that what’s happening in one grade will line up with the next,” he said. ”If they’re not ramping this up from first grade on in a logical fashion … then the transition to more advanced math will be horrendous, too.” (more…)

Ryan Hall watches students work out a graphing equation.

“Every second counts,” teacher Ryan Hall said about the math classes he teaches at Williamsburg Collegiate Charter Middle School.

The Brooklyn teacher, who was recognized by a national nonprofit as one of the top teachers in the country last week, packed a recent eighth-grade class with algebra drills and word problems, presented at a rapid pace to discourage wandering minds.

Last week TNTP named Hall, who got his start as a teacher with Teach for America in 2007, as one of 20 teachers up for the brand-new Fishman Prize for Superlative Classroom Practice. Though Hall did not win the $25,000 prize, he was one of just two city teachers honored as finalists.

GothamSchools spent Tuesday morning watching Hall teach at his school, which consistently posts top scores on the city’s annual progress reports. After class, Hall explained how he organized the class, grouped students, and assessed progress. Hall’s commentary is framed in block quotes beneath our observations.

8 a.m. By moments after first-period started, Hall’s 21 students were already sitting in silence, scribbling the answers to a set of six mathematical problems. As he does on most mornings, Hall started the class with two timed exercises: the “Cranium Cruncher” and the “Do Now,” which teachers across the city have used to kick off their classes since the Department of Education first mandated the “workshop model” in 2003.

Hall said it typically takes him 30-45 minutes to prepare for the class, which always takes place in the morning.

“The ‘Do Now’ is more like grade-level work, with five to six word problems, and we go over that,” Hall said. “Then there’s one to 12 problems on a ‘Cranium Crunch12.’ It’s a drill sheet — basic skills in isolation, like computation.” (more…)

Eighth-graders at the Williamsburg Collegiate Charter School spent June 5-13 in Costa Rica. Between zip line and beach fun, they helped build a biodigester.