Standards, Standards Everywhere

I personally looked at the standards for numbers and operations.

Here are NCTM's:
Grades 6–8 Expectations: In grades 6–8 all students should–

work flexibly with fractions, decimals, and percents to solve problems;
compare and order fractions, decimals, and percents efficiently and find their approximate locations on a number line;
develop meaning for percents greater than 100 and less than 1;
understand and use ratios and proportions to represent quantitative relationships;
develop an understanding of large numbers and recognize and appropriately use exponential, scientific, and calculator notation;
use factors, multiples, prime factorization, and relatively prime numbers to solve problems;
develop meaning for integers and represent and compare quantities with them.

Common Core:
6th Grade: Apply and extend previous understandings of multiplication and division to divide fractions by fractions.

Compute fluently with multi-digit numbers and find common factors and multiples.


Apply and extend previous understandings of numbers to the system of rational numbers.

7th Grade: Apply and extend previous understandings of operations with fractions to add, subtract, multiply, and divide rational numbers.

8th Grade: Know that there are numbers that are not rational, and approximate them by rational numbers.

Salem-Keizer's:
umber and Operation Goals

Number Sense

Use numbers in various forms to solve problems (6, 7, 8)

Understand and use large numbers, including in exponential and scientific notation (6, 7, 8)

Reason proportionally in a variety of contexts using geometric and numerical reasoning, including scaling and solving proportions (6, 7, 8)

Compare numbers in a variety of ways, including differences, rates, ratios, and percents and choose when each comparison is appropriate (6, 7, 8)

Order positive and/or negative rational numbers (6, 7, 8)

Express rational numbers in equivalent forms (6)

Make estimates and use benchmarks (6, 7, 8)

Operations and Algorithms

Develop understanding and skill with all four arithmetic operations on fractions and decimals (6)

Develop understanding and skill in solving a variety of percent problems (6)

Use the order of operations to write, evaluate, and simplify numerical expressions (7, 8)

Develop fluency with paper and pencil computation, calculator use, mental calculation, estimation; and choose among these when solving problems (6, 7)

Properties

Understand the multiplicative structure of numbers, including the concepts of prime and composite numbers, evens, odds, and prime factorizations (6)

Use the commutative and distributive properties to write equivalent numerical expressions (7, 8)

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When looking at the standards it looked like NCTM's were the shortest and most vague of the standards. Both the Salem-Keizer district and the CC were pretty specific and went into specifically which grade level different standards were expected in. NCTM simply breaks down the standards for middle school grades (6-8) as whole. I thinking having to refer back to the NCTM, CC and school district standards will have a tendency to cause some confusion. Although there are definitely veins of similarity between the standards, I think I would have a tendency to look at the school district and CC as opposed to NCTM when designing lesson plans. I think that when you look at NCTM and because it only gives an overarching standard for middle school it will be a little more difficult to break down according to grade. CC and at least the Salem-Keizer district have standards for the each grade level which I personally think will make lesson planning a tad bit easier.