Maywire Math Curriculum Update

Dear Mayfield Families,

Our adoption of California Reveal Math is off to a strong start. We held our Parent Education session on October 16, which will be available to watch via the Resources Board on the school website on Monday. We received valuable feedback from families, including a desire for more resources to support learning at home. Teachers have also continued their professional learning. Our Reveal Math trainer met with grade-level teams on Monday, November 10, to deepen our understanding of the curriculum, particularly regarding resources, lesson facilitation, parent support, and coherence.

Topics we explored included:

1. Resources to support students as they transition to the new curriculum, including tools for students who need additional support and those who are ready for more challenges.

2. Accessing digital books through Clever.

3. Coherence across grade levels, particularly the importance of moving from concrete to more abstract representations (i.e., counting objects > 10-frames > number paths > number lines; base-ten blocks > partial sums; tables of values > proportions or equations, etc.).

All teachers will begin, if they have not already, sending home the Unit Newsletters, which provide families with helpful guidance and models to support learning at home. These will be shared through take-home folders or Grade-Level Newsletters.

• We also want every family to have access to the student textbook at home. The book can be viewed online on any device.

• If you would like to download the book for offline use, this can be done on a tablet only.

• Please review the download instructions here

We would also like to share a few tips on how to use the book at home. Some pages are designed to be exploratory or workbook-style, while others focus on the core content for the lesson.

Here is an example from a 4th Grade workbook that shows where families and students can find guidance. The yellow boxes labeled “Reflect: Think About It!” highlight places to pause, notice patterns, and get support. In 6th and 7th Grade, similar guidance appears in purple boxes titled “Bring It Together.” In 8th Grade and Geometry, these prompts are embedded within the examples (labeled “Step 1,” “Step 2,” etc.) and summarized at the end of each lesson in the “Summary” section, right before the practice problems.

This page also illustrates the progression from concrete to abstract representations. Fraction tiles are the more concrete model, while a number line is more abstract. For students who are struggling, it is best to begin with the concrete. In this example, there are seven fraction tiles, each representing 1/6. So the model shows seven 1/6 pieces, which can be written as 7/6.

A student who is ready to move away from physical models should try solving the same problem using a number line. They would partition one whole into sixths, locate 4/6, and then count on three more sixths. Once students can do this quickly—either on a number line or mentally—we can extend their thinking by asking them to make a conjecture about adding fractions. For example, they might notice that when adding fractions referring to the same whole, you add the numerators and keep the denominator the same. The purple thought bubble, “What shortcut do you see?”, is designed specifically for that purpose: to help students make generalizations about their mathematical thinking.

While adding fractions with the same denominator may seem “easy” procedurally, the deeper mathematical work comes from using concrete and pictorial models to understand why it works—and then being able to generalize the idea and articulate it precisely.

Nicole Wirth

Dean of Academic Life

Brittany Reeser

K-8 Math Specialist