Like many of you, our school district has been working to realign our curriculum to the Common Core. Last year, a team of us spent time learning about CEPAs - Common Educational Proficiency Assessments. In you are familiar, then you know that these assessments have students combining various math skills to complete a real-world task. The assessments are done over a few days or class periods, and push student's stamina and perserverance to complete the task. Today is the first time I'm going to do a CEPA in my 4th grade classroom. Our first math unit is on addition and subtraction, so this CEPA has students estimating, rounding, adding, and subtracting to help a local school district. I'm both nervous and excited to see how the student's react. We're starting slowly, working in groups with lots of modeling and with 3 other adults in the room to assist. The CEPA I created is available at my store if you're interested! Stay tuned to see how it goes...and cross your fingers that we don't get any meltdowns (from teachers or students!) This is tough stuff!
~Kara
