Catherine Castillo, Sr. Implementation Specialist
Claire Neely, Sr. Implementation Specialist
“…[I]nstructional capacity for producing meaningful student learning is a function of the interactions among teachers’ pedagogical and content knowledge; the use of educational materials; and students’ understanding, experiences, and engagement in the learning process.” The Internal Coherence Framework, p. 7
Section C of the IMplementation Reflection Tool (IRT) focuses on the classroom. The indicators in this section provide a set of “look-fors” that support instructional leaders in observing classrooms and guide teachers in reflecting on their practices. These indicators serve as a lens for analyzing instructional strategies and learning behaviors as teachers and students interact during a lesson.
Many schools select focus indicators—a set of three to five indicators to prioritize during their first years of implementation. Using focus indicators can help you collect data to make adjustments to your implementation process and celebrate the progress you make as a result of those adjustments. Pulling from the experiences of schools and districts that have successfully implemented IM Certified® Math using the IRT, we’ve compiled a list of the five most commonly selected focus indicators:
- C1.1 Cultivating a Positive and Inclusive Classroom Community
- C1.4 Valuing Student Thinking
- C1.7 Teacher Questioning
- C2.2 Use of IM’s Design Structure
- C3.3 Communication of Mathematical Ideas
Focus indicators enable you to collect data across classrooms to identify trends in teacher and student actions. This helps leadership teams identify themes for ongoing professional learning that would benefit teachers and leaders in advancing through the progressions. To illustrate the impact of using focus indicators to guide classroom implementation, let’s look at a few recent cases.
Case 1: Longview School District
Longview School District piloted IM Math during the spring in grades 6-12. Throughout the pilot phase, the leadership team used Section C of the IRT as an observation tool to monitor curriculum implementation. After conducting numerous observations across classrooms and schools, the team identified several trends: Students seemed reluctant to share their thinking when responding to math tasks, teachers focused their questions on correct answers rather than exploring student thinking, and there was often insufficient time left for the lesson synthesis.
After adopting IM Math for the following school year, Longview selected specific focus indicators to address these trends and support teachers through the transition:
- C1.1 Cultivating a Positive and Inclusive Classroom Community: To build students’ confidence in sharing their thinking, the district emphasized the importance of establishing a classroom culture that invites and encourages student voice. In pursuit of this goal, they selected C1.1, allowing them to give clear and actionable feedback around creating a collaborative classroom environment, using appropriate wait time to elicit student thinking, and reinforcing the belief that all students can and will learn.
- C1.4 Valuing Student Thinking: To further cultivate a learning community where making thinking visible is both expected and valued, Longview also chose C1.4. The indicator’s specific language on centering discussions around student ideas and inviting students to share incomplete, incorrect, and correct solutions gave instructional leaders concrete strategies to use during coaching cycles with teachers.
- C1.7 Teacher Questioning: Recognizing the connection between the questions teachers ask and the types of responses students are inclined to give, they also selected C1.7. This indicator provides clarity on asking open-ended questions and leveraging student responses to explore and assess mathematical ideas throughout each lesson.
- C3.3 Communication of Mathematical Ideas: To understand how students were adapting to these instructional shifts, Longview decided to use C3.3 to monitor progress over time.
- C2.2 Use of IM’s Design Structure: Finally, to prioritize time for students to formalize their learning, Longview chose C2.2. This focus indicator emphasizes the importance of the IM design structure and how following it contributes to students’ understanding of the learning goals.
Case 2: Applewood Elementary
In their first year implementing IM Math, Applewood Elementary teachers were still adjusting to using a new science curriculum that had been adopted the previous school year. Like many districts, teachers had several competing initiatives to balance as they began using IM Math. Therefore, the leadership team decided it was best to roll out the IM Math implementation slowly and attend to only two indicators in the first year that they believed would best support teachers and students with the change.
In their first year of implementation, they chose indicators C1.1 Cultivating a Positive and Inclusive Classroom Community and C2.2 Use of IM’s Design Structure. With the curriculum change, leaders wanted to support teachers in learning how to best use the materials, adapt their pedagogy, and understand the course structure. They also knew that in shifting to a problem-based teaching and learning model, their teachers would need time to build a community. Their prior curriculum used a direct instruction model that didn’t have embedded structures for students to engage in mathematical discourse, so emphasizing both community-building and leveraging the curriculum materials was extremely important for this transition.
At the end of the first year of implementation, the leadership team reviewed the data and was excited to find that most teachers had progressed to the Implementing stage for both C1.1 and C2.2. They saw artifacts like classroom agreements and Think-Pair-Share posters, heard language reflecting a positive shift in the classroom community, and noticed that most teachers were incorporating all components of the lesson design.
Given the progress the leadership team observed across classrooms, they felt that teachers were ready to take their problem-based instructional practice further by focusing on student thinking. Recognizing that soliciting input from students is closely tied to the types of questions teachers ask, they decided to incorporate two additional focus indicators in their second year: C1.4 Valuing Student Thinking and C1.7 Teacher Questioning. They also added C3.3: Communication of Mathematical Ideas, hypothesizing that it would serve as a great tool for tracking how these practices were influencing students’ communication of mathematical ideas.
Whether you select these focus indicators or identify others for your first years of implementation, Section C of the IRT is designed to provide guidance for teachers and leaders in successfully enacting IM Math. Research shows that selecting high-quality instructional materials is an essential element for improving student achievement and shaping positive math identities, but it is only one piece of a much larger puzzle. True success requires more than great materials—it depends on how those materials are brought to life in the classroom.
The IRT serves as a strategic framework to bridge this gap, empowering educators to focus on key instructional practices that create meaningful and inclusive learning experiences. When educators use the IRT to cultivate environments where students feel a sense of belonging, they help create a world where all learners know, use, and enjoy mathematics.
Conclusion
We’re excited to introduce two new sessions being added to the IM Certified® Professional Learning catalog for instructional leaders: 1. Getting Ready for Classroom Observation Using the IMplementation Reflection Tool and 2. Calibrating for Classroom Observation Using the IMplementation Reflection Tool. These sessions can be taken together or separately and are available for both K-5 and 6-12 audiences. Reach out to your IM Certified PL provider to learn more!
Do you have an IMplementation story you would like to share? Please reach out to us by filling out this form. We’d love to highlight your story!
Forman, M. L., Stosich, E. L., & Bocala, C. (2017). The Internal Coherence Framework: Creating the Conditions for Continuous Improvement in Schools. Harvard Education Press.
Next Steps/Call to Action
-
- Access the IRT and use it with your team to guide your conversations.
- Share your implementation story or insight with us here—we’d love to hear from you!
- Connect with your IM Certified® partner to ask about our new IRT professional learning offerings toward actionable, impactful next steps.
Catherine Castillo
Sr. Implementation Specialist
Catherine Castillo (she/her) has spent her career supporting students and educators as a teacher, instructional math coach, math recovery intervention specialist, and district math coordinator. Catherine now serves as a senior specialist on the Implementation Portfolio team where she creates resources that support coaches and instructional leaders with IM implementation. Catherine is passionate about cultivating positive math identities in students and teachers and supporting the implementation of problem-based teaching and learning.
Claire Neely
Sr. Implementation Specialist
Claire Neely (she/her) received an MS in educational studies with a specialization in mathematics from Johns Hopkins University. Claire has spent her career in education teaching and coaching mathematics in schools of all kinds: Title I, charter, language immersion, traditional public, Montessori, K–8, middle, and high schools. After transitioning out of schools and into professional learning, Claire now serves as a senior specialist on the Implementation Portfolio team creating resources that support math coaches, curriculum specialists, and administrators with IM implementation.
