Facilitator Notes: Exploring Focus by Examining the Critical Areas in Mathematics
Guiding question: How is the mathematics more focused in the new standards?
Snapshot description: Participants organize standards by Critical Areas and discuss
connections.
Goals - participants will:
 Become familiar with the Critical Areas at a grade level.
 Unpack the big ideas, skills, and concepts for at least one Critical Area.
 Understand how the Critical Areas organize and bring focus to grade level standards.
Time estimate: 1 hour
Audience: Pre-K-12 coaches, teachers, and administrators
Requisite background: General familiarity with the new standards and exposure to the
Overview presentation (available at http://www.doe.mass.edu/candi/commoncore/).
Equipment, resources, and tools needed:
 Computer and projector
 Highlighters, poster paper, markers, easel
 PowerPoint presentation
 Handouts:
o One Activity Recording Sheet per participant and one per small group (print
appropriate grade levels from the Excel workbook)
o One copy of the Main Activity Discussion Questions per small group
o 2011 Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks for Mathematics
Activity
Background
Description, Resources, and Tips
Teachers should sit in grade level groups. Please note:
for the main activity, all of the Critical Areas at a grade
level need to be charted. Critical Areas typically range
from 2-4 depending on the grade level. Arrange groups
to ensure that there is at least one person for each
Critical Area at a grade level. If you do not have enough
people at a particular grade level to cover all of Critical
Areas, you might want to plan to either extend the time
for the main activity to allow time for people to read
more than one Critical Area. Another option could be to
have more than one grade level work as a team to look at
the Critical Areas for only one of their grade levels.
Special educators, ELL teachers and specialists should
sit with the grade level that makes the most sense for
your school.
Time (and Your Notes)
5 minutes
Slide 1: Introduction
Slide 2: Desired Outcomes
Slide 3: Focus
The new standards support improved curriculum and
instruction due to increased focus, rigor, clarity, and
coherence. This activity looks at Critical Areas, the main
mechanism of focus in the new standards.
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Slide 4: Critical Areas description
2-4 Critical Areas in each grade level or course
summarize the big ideas of the grade level.
Slide 5: Example of a Critical Area
Have each participant take out their MA Curriculum
Frameworks for Mathematics.
Explain that the Critical Areas are listed at the beginning
of each grade level (on the page before the overview).
Click. The short description of one Critical Area is
highlighted. Explain that each Critical Area page begins
with a short description. The full description of that
Critical Area is now highlighted. This is the meat of the
Critical Area and will be the part that participants will
use in the main activity.
Slide 6: Overview of activities
Preview the flow of the session. The main activity will
involve each participant focusing on one critical area,
working individually to record the standards that fall
within their critical area.
Warm-Up
Slide 7: Warm-up activity
This table shows the number of critical areas by grade
level. Ask participants to discuss the guiding question,
"How could it improve teaching and learning in our
school/district when each grade focuses on a few Critical
Areas?"
10 minutes
Discuss for 5 minutes in small groups and then 5 minutes
with the whole group. You may want to ask people to
chart some key responses to help with reporting out.
Main
Activity
Distribute the Activity Recording Sheets to each small
group, with one per participant and an extra one per
small group. Participants will also need their 2011
Mathematics Curriculum Framework.
20 minutes
Slide 8: Main Activity
The goal of the main activity is for participants to see
how Critical Areas focus and organize the standards for
each grade level.
Task 1:
 In small groups, each member chooses a Critical
Area to focus on.
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(If there are more critical areas than participants at a
grade level, either combine groups and focus on one
grade level or ask participants to start with one Critical
Area and then work on a second one if there is time.
If there are more participants than critical areas, more
than one person can focus on the same critical area.)

Participants read their assigned Critical Area in the
Framework to make sure that they understand it.

Each participant reads the content standard, marking
their Activity Recording Sheet with a:
 √ when a standard matches your Critical Area
and
 ? when you are not sure
Please note: Since the full description of the critical area
is not listed on the recording sheet, participants should
read the full description in their Framework. For this
activity, they should be flipping between the standards
and the Critical Areas, or you can provide hardcopies of
the Critical Areas to make it easier.
Task 2:
 Transfer your individual data to the group's Activity
Recording Sheet.
(The group's recording sheet is the extra recording sheet
at each table.)
Small group
discussion
Slide 9: Grade-level discussion
Looking at the data collected on the group's recording
sheet, participants discuss the discussion questions.
Depending on timing and flow, you may want to ask
small groups to report out as well.

15 minutes
Do some standards NOT fall within any Critical
Area?
There will probably be a few standards that do not fall
within any Critical Areas. Some possible reasons: the
standard is laying the ground work for work in a future
grade or the standard is the culmination of more focused
work at an earlier grade level. If there are groups that
did not finish task one, encourage them to work as a
group to see if the standards without a match belong to
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the Critical Area that was not completed.

Are there standards that fall within more than one
Critical Area?
These standards represent opportunities to connect the
Critical Areas in ways that illustrate the coherence of the
mathematics across the grade level.

Do all standards within a cluster fall within the same
Critical Area?
Clusters may not correspond exactly with Critical Areas.
Whole group
wrap-up
10 minutes
Slide 10: Wrap-up whole group discussion
Use the questions on slide 11 to guide a whole group
discussion that ties the activity to the potential benefits of
the benefits of the Critical Areas.
 How do the Critical Areas help organize and bring
focus to your grade level standards?
 How should we as a school (or district) use what we
have learned today to about Critical Areas in
planning for the implementation of the new
standards?
Slide 11: Feedback and Information
Possible
extensions



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Provide Professional Development on unfamiliar
skills or concepts they found in either the content
standards or the Critical Areas.
Share the Mathematics K-8 Critical Area of
Focus from the Ohio Department of Education:
http://www.ode.state.oh.us Have participants
compare their work to the work of the Department.
Ask them to discuss instances where they do not
agree with Ohio’s match of a standard to a
particular Critical Area. Remind them that this
work is somewhat subjective.
Draw up a plan to use the Critical Areas as a basis
for curriculum mapping and creating assessments.
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