Psst...Texas Teachers...

Did you hear?

We have new Math TEKS!

(If you don't live in Texas...I'm sorry! And also, you might not know that we do not follow the Common Core. But come on...we threaten to secede every few years. Why would we follow the common core?)

Anyhoo...there are BIG changes coming. The new TEKS do not oficially begin until the 2014-2015 school year. But many districts, including mine, started rolling them out last year. So are you ready for the big shockers?

So that awesome sorting balls lesson I have? Gone! (Except you could do it in science). Kids will still sort geometric shapes by their attributes (but not by color, size, pattern, etc).

No more patterns.

No more red, yellow, blue, blue. Gone!

No more fair shares.

So no more excuses to eat graham crackers and Hershey Bars in class. (Although I can still probably find a reason).

No more calendar.

(Not in math, anyways...social studies still has some).

No more ordinal numbers.

(Although my district is keeping this as a local TEK.)

No more surface area or duration of time in measuring.

So what are we going to be doing?

Lots and lots of number sense/computational fluency, real-world problem solving and making generalizations.

Although some changes may seem minor, there are subtle cognitive and content changes that increase the rigor significantly. And there is much greater emphasis on mathematical processes--(really look at K.1 A-G).

(Actually, our TEKS look a whole lot more like the Common Core now--at least in kinder!)

It's all good!

But not on my blog. Most of my lessons will be obsolete. But don't worry--I have lots more up my sleeve! I have a bunch of posts planned that will address the new TEKS in detail with lesson ideas included.

If you would like to see the new TEKS in their entirety, you can check them out here.

Don't panic. This is a great new adventure! And I really believe that these new TEKS will better prepare our children for the math skills they will need in the future. So bring it on...we'll all be just fine.