MMSD Mathematics Content Standards for Number and Operations
Introduction | Grade 6 | Grade 7 | Grade 8
Wisconsin’s Model Academic Standards (WMAS) Standard B:
Number and Operations, 1998 (p. 6)
Students in Wisconsin will use numbers effectively for various purposes, such as counting, measuring, estimating, and problem solving.
People use numbers to quantify, describe, and label things in the world around them. It is important to know the many uses of numbers and various ways of representing them. Number sense is a matter of necessity, not only in one’s occupation but also in the conduct of daily life, such as shopping, cooking, planning a budget, or analyzing information reported in the media. When computing, an educated person needs to know which operations (e.g., addition, multiplication), which procedures (e.g., mental techniques, algorithms), or which technological aids (e.g., calculator, spreadsheet) are appropriate.
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (PSSM) Number and Operations, 2000 (pp. 214-221)
Instructional programs from pre-kindergarten through grade 12 should enable all students to:
In grades 6-8, students should deepen their understanding of fractions, decimals, percents, and integers, and they should become proficient in using them to solve problems. By solving problems that require multiplicative comparisons (e.g., “How many times as many?” or “How many per?”), students will gain extensive experience with ratios, rates, and percents, which help form a solid foundation for their understanding of, and facility with, proportionality. The study of rational numbers in the middle grades should build on students’ prior knowledge of whole-number concepts and skills and their encounters with fractions, decimals, and percents in lower grades and in everyday life. Students’ facility with rational numbers and proportionality can be developed in concert with their study of many topics in the middle-grades curriculum. For example, students can use fractions and decimals to report measurements, to compare survey responses from samples of unequal size, to express probabilities, to indicate scale factors for similarity, and to represent constant rate of change in a problem or slope in a graph of a linear function.