Introducing the Standards for Mathematical Practice (SMPs)

Resources for introducing Math Common Core State Standards and Standards for Mathematical Practice to teachers and pre-service teachers.

Jan 13, 2025

Common Core has been around since 2010. I remember back then having to do lots of professional development for teachers around the changes. Even in 2015 I was including PD around the SMPs in many of my presentations.

These days, I don’t find the need to dust off those old activities too much. However, recently I was working with some teachers that, although had been teaching a curriculum aligned to CCSS, didn’t know what it meant when a lesson had “MP3” or “MP5” written at the top. Also, I agreed to be an adjunct professor for a course for pre-service special education majors on how to teach math. Cue the need to find some professional learning resources around CCSS and SMPs!

So, if you find yourself with similar needs, I thought I would gather all of the resources I found (or made) to introduce CCSS in 2025!

Intro to Content Standards

The pre-service teachers I have now were in 1st grade when CCSS came out. That means that they majority of their math experience was using the standards. However, they might be unaware of the pushback they could experience from parents of their students that were not taught using these standards.

To provide a little context, I used this video and this one to introduce the controversy. I also connected our deep dive into content to the Teaching for Robust Understanding (TRU) Framework. Specifically we talked about “The Mathematics.”

Next, we looked at the content standards and were to find the domains, clusters, and standards.

I asked each teacher to look at a different grade level and answer these questions (borrowed from here):

Domains

What is a domain?

Clusters

What is a cluster? Which domain in your grade level has the most clusters? The fewest?

Standards

What is a standard? How many standards are there in your grade level? How many standards begin with the word understand?

We didn’t spend a lot of time on these links for Achieve the Core, but I did show them to them and said it might be a good reference once they are in the classroom and using the standards.

Content focus by grade level
Coherence Map

Intro to Standards for Mathematical Practice

As a warm-up to introducing SMPs, I first asked teachers what it takes to be a mathematician. Teachers came up with things such as: problem solver, willing to make mistakes, check their work, work together, communicate, carefully calculate, show their work, and look for patterns.

Next, I had teachers do this card sort. I’ll admit, it was challenging, but it was a good way to get engaged with the SMPs and start trying to make sense of what they are. As we went through the correct matches, we made connections to the list of what they had said made a mathematician.