Decoding the Ontario Curriculum

Understanding The Ontario Mathematics Curriculum

What is curriculum? How can I find it? What does it mean? These are all questions I've had asked many times before. As educator's sometimes we forget that we have our own teacher-speak. Never be afraid to ask for clarification if an educator uses terms or acronyms you don't understand. We are used to seeing them every day so they become second nature to us. I promise we don't intentionally try to confuse you.

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The curriculum documents are the guides educators follow when planning their programming. They lay out the expectations that every publicly funded school in Ontario must follow. All of the curriculum documents can be found online, so if you ever wonder what your child's expectations are for a particular year you can look them up. 

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This section of the website is designed to help you better understand how to read the Math document. The latest Math curriculum was released in 2020. Within the website you will find specific expectations for each grade, strand overviews, parent resources, and a glossary. 

The specific expectations go through each expectation that will be covered over the course of the year. The teacher develops their programming and assessments based on the overall and specific expectations. The overall expectations are like the 'big ideas'/connections/goals that will be covered in each strand. What I really like about the specific expectations is that the ministry has included "Why is my child learning this" expandable links. These little information tidbits help to explain the purpose and why behind the learning. 

The Strand Overviews are charts that show the progression of the curriculum. They are a quick reference to see how the expectations progress from grade to grade. 

Each grade also has a glossery of terms included as reference if you are unsure of what a specific math term means. 

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This is a quick glimpse into the Ontario Mathematics curriculum. Below I've also included resource links that have been developed by the Ministry of Education for your reference.