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Course Guides and Frameworks

Overview

Pre-AP Geometry with Statistics is designed to provide students with a meaningful conceptual bridge between algebra and geometry to deepen their understanding of mathematics. Students often struggle to see the connections among their mathematics courses. In this course, students are expected to use the mathematical knowledge and skills they have developed previously to problem solve across the domains of algebra, geometry, and statistics. The course includes a unit of statistics and probability to help students build a deeper understanding of essential concepts related to quantitative literacy.

Areas of Focus

The Pre-AP mathematics areas of focus, shown below, are mathematical practices that students develop and leverage as they engage with content. They were identified through educator feedback and research about where students and teachers need the most curriculum support. These areas of focus are vertically aligned to the mathematical practices embedded in other mathematics courses in high school, including AP, and in college, giving students multiple opportunities to strengthen and deepen their work with these skills throughout their education. They also support and align to the AP Calculus mathematical practices, the AP Statistics course skills, and the mathematical practices listed in various state standards.

Pre-AP Geometry with Statistics Areas of Focus:

  • Connections among multiple representations: Students represent mathematical concepts in a variety of forms and move fluently among the forms.
  • Greater authenticity of applications and modeling: Students create and use mathematical models to understand and explain authentic scenarios.
  • Engagement in mathematical argumentation: Students use evidence to craft mathematical conjectures and prove or disprove them.

Underlying Unit Foundations

These big ideas are addressed across units:

  • Measurement
  • Transformation
  • Comparison and composition

Course at a Glance

The tables below show the four main units in Pre-AP Geometry with Statistics, the recommended length for each unit, and the key topics in each.

 

Timeframe: ~7 weeks

Key concepts:

  • 1.1 The shape of data
  • 1.2 Chance events
  • 1.3 Inferences from data

Timeframe: ~7 weeks

Key concepts:

  • 2.1 Measurement in geometry
  • 2.2 Parallel and perpendicular lines
  • 2.3 Measurement in right triangles

Timeframe: ~7 weeks

Key concepts:

  • 3.1 Transformations of points in a plane
  • 3.2 Congruent and similar polygons
  • 3.3 Measurement of lengths and angles in circles

Timeframe: ~7 weeks

Key concepts:

  • 4.1 Area as a two-dimensional measurement
  • 4.2 Volume as a three-dimensional measurement
  • 4.3 Measurement of spheres

Instructional Resources

Schools that officially implement a Pre-AP course will receive access to instructional resources for each unit. These resources don’t constitute a full day-by-day curriculum. Instead, they provide support for teachers as they design their instruction for each Geometry with Statistics unit.

Pre-AP Geometry with Statistics instructional resources include:

  • A course framework: the framework defines what students should know and be able to do by the end of the course. It serves as an anchor for model lessons and assessments, and it is the primary document teachers can use to align instruction to course content.
  • Teacher resources, available in print and online, include a robust set of model lessons that demonstrate how to translate the course framework, shared principles, and areas of focus into daily instruction.
  • Additional support resources include Distance Learning Companion Slides that accompany the teacher and student instructional materials for use in synchronous and asynchronous settings.

Additional resources: All students need access to a graphing utility (such as graphing calculators or an app on a cellphone or a laptop with graphing software like Desmos) and don’t need to purchase any particular device or equipment.

Assessments for Learning

Each unit contains:

  • Short, open-ended formative assessment problems or questions that are embedded in some model lesson to show the targeted content and skills, related to the lesson’s learning objectives, that students should master throughout the lesson.
  • Two online learning checkpoints per unit that feature multiple-choice and technology-enhanced questions modeled closely after the types of questions students encounter on SAT tests and AP Exams. Learning checkpoints require students to examine graphs, data, and short texts—often set in authentic contexts—to respond to a targeted set of questions that measure student understanding of concepts and skills from the unit.
  • One performance task per unit that engages students in sustained problem-solving and asks them to synthesize skills and concepts from across the unit to answer questions about a novel context. 
  • One or two practice performance tasks with scoring guidelines and instructional support suggestions for each unit.

The following documents provide a summary of the alignment of the Pre-AP Framework to state standards.

The following documents provide a detailed alignment of the Pre-AP Framework to state standards.

Instructional planning guides support creating customized course road maps.

Partnerships

Desmos and College Board have partnered to provide interactive digital experiences that help students learn through modeling and use of multiple representations.