Grade 6 - PARCC Item & Task Prototypes, Key Advances, Fluency Expectations, Within-Grade Dependencies
PARCC Item & Task Prototypes, Key Advances, Fluency Expectations, Within-Grade Dependencies
PARCC Item & Task Prototypes
PARCC Key Advances
Students’ prior understanding of and skill with multiplication, division, and fractions contribute to their study of ratios, proportional relationships and unit rates (6.RP).
Students begin using properties of operations systematically to work with variables, variable expressions, and equations (6.EE).
Students extend their work with the system of rational numbers to include using positive and negative numbers to describe quantities (6.NS.5), extending the number line and coordinate plane to represent rational numbers and ordered pairs (6.NS.6), and understanding ordering and absolute value of rational numbers (6.NS.7).
Having worked with measurement data in previous grades, students begin to develop notions of statistical variability, summarizing and describing distributions (6.SP).
PARCC Fluency Expectations
6.NS.2 Students fluently divide multidigit numbers using the standard algorithm. This is the culminating standard for several years’ worth of work with division of whole numbers.
6.NS.3 Students fluently add, subtract, multiply, and divide multidigit decimals using the standard algorithm for each operation. This is the culminating standard for several years’ worth of work relating to the domains of Number and Operations in Base Ten, Operations and Algebraic Thinking, and Number and Operations — Fractions.
6.NS.1 Students interpret and compute quotients of fractions and solve word problems involving division of fractions by fractions. This completes the extension of operations to fractions.
PARCC Examples of Major Within-Grade Dependencies
Equations of the form px = q (6.EE.7) are unknown-factor problems; the solution will sometimes be the quotient of a fraction by a fraction (6.NS.1).
Solving problems by writing and solving equations (6.EE.7) involves not only an appreciation of how variables are used (6.EE.6) and what it means to solve an equation (6.EE.5) but also some ability to write, read, and evaluate expressions in which letters stand for numbers (6.EE.2).
Students must be able to place rational numbers on a number line (6.NS.7) before they can place ordered pairs of rational numbers on a coordinate plane (6.NS.8). The former standard about ordering rational numbers is much more fundamental.