The Massachusetts pre-kindergarten standards apply to children who are older four- and younger five-year olds. The standards—which correspond with the learning activities in the Massachusetts Guidelines for Preschool Learning Experiences (2003)—can be promoted through play and exploration activities, and embedded in almost all daily activities. They should not be limited to “math time.” In this age group, foundations of mathematical understanding are formed out of children’s experiences with real objects and materials.
Handout for Families - Introducing Illustrative Mathematics (Available in: Amharic, Arabic, Bengali, Haitian Creole, Spanish) | DESE Family Guide (Kindergarten)
In Preschool, instructional time should focus on two critical areas:
- developing an understanding of whole numbers to 10, including concepts of one-to-one correspondence, counting, cardinality (the number of items in a set), and comparison; and
- recognizing two-dimensional shapes, describing spatial relationships, and sorting and classifying objects by one or more attributes.
Relatively more learning time should be devoted to developing children’s sense of number as quantity than to other mathematics topics.
Standards for Mathematical Practice
The 2011 framework introduces Standards for Mathematical Practice. These standards complement the content standards so that students increasingly engage with the subject matter as they grow in mathematical maturity and expertise throughout the elementary, middle, and high school years. These standards are the same at all grades from Prekindergarten to 12th grade.
These eight practices can be clustered into the following categories as shown in the chart below
Habits of Mind of a Productive Mathematical Thinker:
MP.1: Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
MP.6: Attend to precision.
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Reasoning and Explaining
MP.2: Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
MP.3: Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others
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Modeling and Using Tools
MP.4: Model with mathematics.
MP.5: Use appropriate tools strategically.
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Seeing Structure and Generalizing
MP.7: Look for and make use of structure.
MP.8: Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.
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Content Standards to be covered in Preschool
The focus of instruction in Preschool is determined by the Prekindergarten standards outlined in the Massachusetts 2011 Mathematics Curriculum Framework, which can be found on the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's website.