At Pierce Middle School, our mathematics program strives to uphold both excellence and equity to ensure the success of every one of our students. Following the 2017 Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Mathematics Curriculum Framework, our courses seek to build simultaneously students’ mathematical fluency, conceptual understanding, and ability to perform applied problem solving. As students master the content listed below, they also engage in communication and reasoning as embodied in the Standards for Mathematical Practice:
1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
4. Model with mathematics.
5. Use appropriate tools strategically.
6. Attend to precision.
7. Look for and make use of structure.
8. Look for an express regularity in repeated reasoning.
Grade 6
Instruction focuses on five critical areas specified in the Curriculum Framework: “(1) connecting ratio and rate to whole number multiplication and division, and using concepts of ratio and rate to solve problems; (2) completing understanding of division of fractions and extending the notion of number to the system of rational numbers, which includes negative numbers; (3) writing, interpreting, and using expressions and equations; (4) developing understanding of statistical thinking; and (5) reasoning about geometric shapes and their measurements (p. 54).
Grade 7
Instruction focuses on four critical areas specified in the Curriculum Framework: “(1) developing understanding of and applying proportional relationships; (2) developing understanding of operations with rational numbers and working with expressions and linear equations; (3) solving problems involving scale drawings and informal geometric constructions, and working with two- and three-dimensional shapes to solve problems involving area, surface area, and volume; and (4) drawing inferences about populations based on samples.” (p. 61).
Grade 8
This course addresses content traditionally found in an Algebra I course. Instruction focuses on three critical areas specified in the Curriculum Framework: “(1) formulating and reasoning about expressions and equations, including modeling an association in bivariate data with a linear equation, and solving linear equations and systems of linear equations; (2) grasping the concept of a function and using functions to describe quantitative relationships; (3) analyzing two- and three-dimensional space and figures using distance, angle, similarity, and congruence, and understanding and applying the Pythagorean Theorem” (p. 67).
Additional Math Information for Pierce Students and Families:
Brian Selig
K-12 Mathematics Director