Maybe you have already heard this statement from your colleagues or other Primary Years Programme (PYP) educators. However, other educators say otherwise, and they say it depends on how you use it. I am with the latter.
Some PYP schools use a specific math curriculum or a programme like Eureka Math, Illustrative Math, Singapore Math or New Zealand Maths. These schools choose and use a particular curriculum for various reasons, such as increasing student performance and coherency of teaching.
Whether or not these math curricula or programmes conform to PYP depends on how we use them. Some say we should only use them as resources and not strictly follow how they have directed teachers to use them. I agree, and we should also customise them to ensure that we adhere to the following:
International Baccalaureate's (IB) approaches to teaching;
PYP's beliefs and values in mathematics;
PYP's effective mathematics practice.
Choosing a math curriculum or programme
Schools choose a specific math curriculum or programme differently. Some schools involve the whole school community through a collaborative approach in researching, trialling and choosing a math curriculum that suits their context and objectives. However, there are also schools where administrators, for various reasons, choose the curriculum and ask their teachers to implement them. Our school, Khartoum International Community School (KICS), followed the former, deciding on Eureka Math.
After choosing the math programme, it is essential to go over our learning standards as written in our math scope and sequence to ensure they align with the chosen curriculum or programme. In our case, we had two options- revise our existing math scope and sequence or adopt the curriculum framework that is well-aligned with Eureka Math. We decided to adopt.
Eureka Math is very well aligned with the Common Core standards. Hence, we adopted the American Education Reaches Out (AERO) Common Core Plus curriculum framework for math. The only effort we need to make is to develop conceptual understandings as a requirement from IB that AERO math doesn't have. We followed Christopher Frost's process in developing our conceptual understandings. Below is a screenshot sample from our scope and sequence document.
The Eureka Math Correlation section above contains the Eureka Math modules where the standards will be explored or addressed. This task was easy as EngageNY had already created a ready-made document we referred to.
Implementing the chosen curriculum or programme
The PYP identified stages in how children learn mathematics: constructing meaning, transferring meaning, and applying with understanding. Accordingly, we should consider these stages when planning for learning engagements.
On the other hand, Eureka Math has its suggested lesson structure (in the yellow outer circle), fully supporting PYP's mathematics learning stages. As the students go through Eureka's lesson structure, they construct meaning, transfer meaning, and apply their learning with understanding.
Moreover, one of the exciting experiences in using Eureka Math is when we customise the lessons to demonstrate IB's approaches to teaching. We also customise to incorporate the other elements and practices of PYP, as shown in the blue outermost circle.
Our fantastic former math coach, Kari Rwenzo, has shared how she customises her Eureka math lessons following Eureka's lesson structure. Kari's approach has become a model and an inspiration to our teachers. Below are the details (with permission) of how she customised her lessons.
The weak point of Eureka Math concerning transdisciplinary learning in the PYP is it is a spiral curriculum. This approach makes it very difficult to learn units of inquiry through mathematics. We try our very best to align, but if there is no way, we inquire into mathematics as subjects-specific before being used and applied in the context of the units of inquiry.
Using a specific math curriculum or programme is PYP as long as you use them as resources and customise them. How about you, what is your belief about this matter? What specific math curriculum are you using in your school, and how are you customising your lessons?
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