Saskatchewan Math: Planning a Unit to the Saskatchewan Curriculum

Quick answer: Plan from the outcomes, then decide which indicators you will actually collect. Saskatchewan Curriculum states outcomes as what students must know and do by the end of the grade, with indicators describing the breadth and depth of acceptable evidence. A unit plan is finished when every outcome on it has named indicators and a piece of student work attached to each.

How do outcomes and indicators shape a Saskatchewan unit?

Copy the outcome wording into your plan verbatim, then list the indicators underneath it. The indicators are the part teachers skim and the part that decides how deep the unit goes, because two teachers can cover the same outcome at completely different levels and both feel justified. Reading them properly in August settles arguments in March about whether something was taught.

Saskatchewan also lets you add your own indicators where the published set does not fit your students, which is more freedom than most curricula give. Use it deliberately: write the extra indicator down, note why it exists, and file the student work that answers it. An added indicator nobody recorded is indistinguishable from a lesson that wandered off the outcome.

Which evidence should a unit actually collect?

Pick three pieces per unit and let everything else be practice. One short check while the outcome is still being taught, one task where students explain their reasoning in their own words, and one cumulative piece that pulls in an earlier outcome. Three deliberate artifacts per unit give you a defensible record without the marking load that a graded worksheet every Friday creates.

In the early grades, Free Math Resource Pack – Number Sense for Grades 1–4 costs nothing and covers number sense across grades 1 to 4, which makes it a sensible place to gather baseline evidence before committing money to anything. Score it once, file it, and you have a starting point for every grouping decision. The rest of the grade-level catalogue for your classroom is listed on the Saskatchewan Curriculum Teaching Resources (K–12), sorted by topic.

What carries the weight in senior years without a provincial exam?

Saskatchewan runs no universal provincial graduation examination, and students earn the graduation certificate through the 24-credit requirement instead. That puts the weight on course marks, which means your unit-level records are the transcript. Documenting evidence against outcomes matters more here than in provinces where a final exam absorbs the pressure, and division reporting on graduation outcomes has been under public scrutiny.

For senior classes heading toward calculus, or divisions that run Advanced Placement sections, AP Calculus Exam Prep Workbook | AP Calculus AB & BC Review gives you a structured review set you can spread across a term rather than compress into May. Assign a section per unit as the cumulative piece, and by spring your students have a marked record instead of a memory of having covered it.

How do I plan a full year without losing every evening?

Lay the outcomes for the grade across the calendar first, in pencil, and count how many teaching weeks each unit really gets after report card weeks, division professional development days and the assemblies nobody schedules until October. Most year plans fail because they assume forty usable weeks. Planning against the real number lets you decide which outcomes get depth and which get a solid single pass.

If planning time is the actual constraint, Teach-Life-Balance: The Complete Time-Saving Course for Teachers (incl. Planner, Guides & Templates) is aimed at the workload side rather than the content, with templates for the year plan you keep rebuilding. Teachers in other provinces work from differently worded documents, and the Canadian Curriculum Navigator: Resources by Province pages let you compare how another curriculum organizes the same mathematics before you borrow a sequence from it.

Frequently asked questions

Do these resources use Saskatchewan outcome and indicator wording?

No, they are written to grade-level mathematics content. Mapping them takes about ten minutes: open the outcome on the provincial curriculum portal, mark which pages produce evidence for which indicators, and write the outcome code on the answer key. The mapping then holds for every future class you teach.

Can I count a purchased worksheet as evidence for an outcome?

Yes, if it produces the kind of work the indicator describes. Check the indicator wording first: a task that asks students to compute will not answer an indicator about explaining or representing. Choose the resource for the verb, not the topic heading, and note on the page which indicator it addresses.

Are these materials connected to the Saskatchewan Ministry of Education?

No. They are independent teaching resources and are not affiliated with, approved by, or endorsed by the Saskatchewan Ministry of Education, any school division, or any assessment body. Each downloads instantly for you to review and adapt; for questions about a purchase, see the store's refund policy.

Related reading

• Assessment and Reporting in Saskatchewan Math
• Saskatchewan: Teaching Math with Multilingual Learners
• Saskatchewan Curriculum Teaching Resources (K–12)