Aligned With Common Core Math Pathways Pitfalls

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Oct 30, 2025, 3:49 AM

aligned with common core math pathways pitfalls

Math Pathways & Pitfalls® is aligned with the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics in the domains of Operations and Algebraic Thinking and Numbers and Operations. Each book teaches age-appropriate math skills for two grade levels while also helping students get ready for algebra concepts they’ll need later on. Math Pathways & Pitfalls lessons build on each other within each topic. At the same time, teachers can choose specific lessons to address particular student needs, match their curriculum requirements, or align with the Common Core and math standards from selected states. Learn how to select and sequence lessons according to the Common Core. We provide a professional development model that guides teachers through five foundational principles and teaching practices aligned with the Common Core’s 8 Standards for Mathematical Practice.

Each training session shows teachers how to use the principle in their Math Pathways & Pitfalls lessons. Our team works directly with schools and districts to design lessons that use these proven teaching methods. We offer each training as a full-day workshop at your school, your district office, or at WestEd’s office in Alameda, California. Teachers can attend all five workshops or choose the ones that work best for them. This partnership gives districts the materials they need and the practical guidance on how to use them in the classroom. Many parents and teachers are very worried about the Common Core Standards, and some are actively fighting against it.

There is a lot of confusion, anger, uncertainty—and even some misinformation. In this document, it is my hope to clarify my position and thinking concerning the Common Core Standards (CCS). Math Mammoth's position Thoughts about testing Common Core and common sense Bad examples of "common core" or "new math" Conceptual math Details of the alignment (a separate page) Overall, I think the US is doing far too much testing of students on every level (local and national). Testing can be harmful... read my article about timed tests and how they can damages students' learning of math.

I do not support all of this testing going on, no matter what standards it is based on, but unfortunately it's not up to me whether our students will be tested. Even some homeschooled students will be required to take math tests based on their state standards, which in many cases will be the CCS. As of this writing (March 2014), it is still to be seen how the tests based on the CCS will look like. What follows is my take on some math problems of supposedly "common core math" or "new math" that have circulated on the internet. I feel they show us a misdirected implementation of the CCS. Math Pathways & Pitfalls® transforms common mistakes into pathways for growth and achievement.

Help elementary school and middle school students explain their math thinking and discuss concepts like real mathematicians do. Already bought the book? Access supporting resources. Math Pathways & Pitfalls gives teachers lessons and techniques to ask the right questions, clarify student thinking, and help them understand why incorrect answers (“Oops!”) don’t make sense. This creates a classroom where every student can participate and be heard. Each book offers 20-plus lessons across two grades with mini-followups to strengthen your curriculum.

Use common errors to build skills and vocabulary and to improve test scores while preparing students for algebra concepts. The program is Common Core aligned and research-backed. Math Pathways & Pitfalls is ready to use immediately. Still, many schools find our training helpful for building a consistent approach, supporting all learners—including multilingual students—and developing teachers’ math instruction skills. The Fordham Institute’s recent study, Common Core Math in the K-8 Classroom: Results from a National Teacher Survey, took a close look at how educators are implementing the Common Core math standards in classrooms... Using focus groups and a survey of teachers, Ann Duffett, David Griffith, and I gleaned valuable insights that ranged from good to bad to ugly.

As we approach the forthcoming school year and 150,000 teachers prepare to teach math to students from kindergarten through eighth grade, it’s worth taking stock of what we’ve learned. Let’s start with the good. With few exceptions, educators are very knowledgeable about what content is considered “grade-level” for the grades they teach, and they are prioritizing content that the standards designate as “critical areas.” Teachers are also paying... Across CCSS states, rigor, consistency, and cohesion in K–8 mathematics has increased—a very good (and necessary) thing! Teachers are also spending more time collaborating, especially with their grade-level colleagues. Working together leads to better curriculum design (e.g., how much time to spend on a particular topic), better instruction, and more consistency across teachers in the same school and/or district.

Educators are also focusing more extensively on strategies for teaching procedures. This helps increase procedural fluency by giving students a repertoire of strategies and demonstrating when to use them to efficiently and accurately solve problems. But these new strategies have also had some regrettable collateral consequences. Yes, teachers are teaching more of them. There’s more pressure to do so, however, and little guidance on which problem-solving strategies to prioritize, how many might be appropriate for a particular topic, and (most importantly) why students benefit from knowing more... The Math Pathways & Pitfalls® all-in-one program provides everything a teacher needs to teach with ease and success.

Each book contains the following: Each Math Pathways & Pitfalls book is complete for use as an intervention or for prevention. The program fits a variety of formal and informal learning situations: Adapt Math Pathways & Pitfalls lessons for other settings. Download a road map that shows how. Here’s a set of student pages and supporting resources for the Second Edition.

Susan Evans, a school administrator, comments that the power of Math Pathways & Pitfalls® comes not only from the lessons but also from their delivery. The strategies and questioning techniques transfer to the core curriculum, making learning fun and powerful. A classroom observation study found evidence that Math Pathways & Pitfalls practices do transfer to regular math lessons (Heller Research Associates, 2008). This may explain why only a few lessons—about 30 hours of instruction over 2 years—can have an impact on students’ standardized test scores. Math Pathways & Pitfalls® transforms common mathematical errors that elementary school and middle school students make into learning opportunities. Rather than avoiding errors and misunderstandings, our approach confronts these pitfalls directly, converting them into pathways for mastering key mathematics standards.

This flexible, research-backed intervention serves diverse purposes—whether helping students who struggle to catch up or preventing problems before they emerge. Aligned with the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, each book for available grade ranges builds foundational skills while preparing students for future algebra concepts. Rigorous studies of Math Pathways & Pitfalls—including two national randomized trials—demonstrated significant improvements in math achievement, vocabulary development, and outcomes for multilingual learners across all student populations. Teachers can use Math Pathways & Pitfalls lessons at the beginning of a math unit to spot common mistakes or difficulties their students might run into later on. This helps teachers know what misunderstandings to watch out for and address before they become bigger problems. Lessons and instructional strategies are designed to do the following:

The program works in many different purposes as The stress students feel in math class is so common that the experience has its own name: math anxiety. With national reports sounding the alarm on declining math scores, the need to make math classrooms more supportive is urgent. WestEd’s Math Pathways & Pitfalls (MPP) helps address this need with a K–8 curriculum (grades K–1, 2–3, 4–6, and 6–8) and professional learning model that helps students turn common mistakes—pitfalls—into pathways for growth and... The curriculum, now in its second and updated edition, can be used as an intervention, as part of core instruction, or in after-school settings. By addressing common misconceptions and providing clear pathways to understanding, it empowers educators with essential tools to improve student achievement while making the learning experience more supportive.

In this Q&A, experts José Franco and Bob Rosenfeld discuss the program, exploring how it works, what its impact is, and more. José Franco: MPP encourages every student to explicitly examine and explain their mathematics thinking and processes. The program strives to engage all students in math discussions; agreeing, disagreeing, questioning, and valuing each other’s ideas in a respectful manner; addressing important content standards; and tackling misunderstandings they might have about the... Each lesson takes the unique approach of confronting misconceptions head-on by asking students to analyze both correct and incorrect ways of solving a problem (“pathways” and “pitfalls”). The goal isn’t for students to guess which one is right but rather to build a sound conceptual understanding by discussing why the correct answer works and why the reasoning behind the incorrect answer...

Aligned With Common Core Math Pathways Pitfalls

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