Tina Cardone, Specialist, 9-12 Content
Brea Jimenez, Sr. Specialist, Facilitator Certification and Quality Assurance
Note: This blog post is intended to inspire creative solutions to the challenges teachers of special populations face with and without support staff*, though we cannot address every scenario that exists across all contexts. Since 6–12 teachers are generally divided by content area, this post is primarily aimed at those educators.
IM® v.360 is a high-quality, standards-aligned, problem-based core curriculum that enriches learning environments and reduces access barriers through the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework and invitational approaches. While it is not generally intended, designed, nor recommended for use as an academic intervention or as a replacement for specialized academic instruction, students receiving specialized academic support may still benefit from IM v.360’s diverse representations, predictable structure, and real-world connections.
*Support staff includes special education teachers or paraprofessionals in classrooms with mathematics teachers daily.
Positioning educators as learning facilitators often raises questions about how students with diverse learning needs will receive the support they need. IM Math encourages all students to become storytellers—actively engaging with concepts to create narratives around math problems and use storytelling techniques to explain their reasoning and understanding. To empower every mathematical storyteller in the classroom, teachers need to get to know each student as an individual. Whereas curriculum writers must imagine hypothetical students engaging in learning activities, teachers are uniquely positioned to accurately identify the unique characteristics of the genuine humans they’re teaching. This involves a balanced approach of reading Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), talking to adults who know the students, and authentically engaging with the students themselves. The more robust a teacher’s understanding of each student, the better prepared they will be to effectively adapt curricular materials for students with diverse learning needs.
While curriculum-specific data on effectiveness in populations of students with disabilities is still emerging, the use of Illustrative Mathematics’ implementation supports has resulted in promising academic achievement data for these students. In the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), both students with disabilities and English learners exceeded state averages: Students with disabilities showed a 1.2-point improvement (compared to a 0.2-point statewide increase), and English learners performed above both pre-pandemic levels and the 2023–2024 statewide average. Similarly, in Wisconsin’s Verona Area School District, the implementation of IM’s problem-based curriculum led to an 8 percent reduction in the need for mathematics intervention among middle and high school students with disabilities.
As we consider these and other metrics of success for students with disabilities, let’s take a deeper look at how the IM v.360 curriculum supports learners at a variety of lesson-level entry points.
Lesson Spotlight: Grade 7 Unit 5 Lesson 3
This lesson contains several suggestions for supporting students with disabilities:
- Activity 2 print version recommends providing a physical model.
- Activity 2 digital version recommends providing step-by-step instructions for the applet.
- Activity 4 recommends providing a reference sheet for relevant symbols.
Let’s consider our first math storyteller, a hypothetical student with dyslexia. Which support(s) would you implement to help that student access the content in this lesson? There’s no correct answer here—even with a diagnosis, we still don’t know exactly what this particular student will need. It’s likely they will benefit from a reference sheet that includes the less than and greater than symbols. They might also benefit from the opportunity to use a physical model, or they might be comfortable navigating a number line already. Step-by-step instructions may be beneficial but could also add to the student’s cognitive load by asking them to read even more text than the rest of the class. Most of all, this math storyteller benefits from the careful planning and preparation of their support team.
Planning intentional student supports—especially as the sole adult in a full classroom—is critical and requires careful thought. IM v.360 offers teachers supports such as the Unit at a Glance document, which orients teachers to glossary terms, prerequisite content (as assessed on the Check Your Readiness pre-unit assessment), instructional routines, and materials used. This one-stop shop covers many of the aspects of a lesson that students may need accommodations for.
While planning ahead will be key, leading with curiosity and adjusting to students’ classroom needs is where educators will find the greatest value. There are inherent limitations on what you can accomplish during any given lesson. It might be that the “best” support for our hypothetical student with dyslexia is to provide them with a distraction-free space with direct access to a teacher to read text aloud as they encounter it. That’s unlikely to be feasible during math class, though, so we must make the best choice possible within the given constraints. The IM v.360 curriculum supports this choice-making with the recommendations for students with disabilities that appear in each lesson. These recommendations are a great starting point but are by no means a comprehensive list of appropriate strategies to use.
Another way to bolster support for students is by including the other educators and specialists on their support teams. For example, a student with dyslexia may regularly work one-on-one with a reading specialist. Consistently updating the reading specialist on the topics, vocabulary, and representations that the student is encountering in math class will give the student additional opportunities to build fluency with the support of an expert in their disability. IM v.360 offers narratives to make this a lighter lift for educators. The student lesson summaries and family support materials are both good options for concisely communicating the essentials of what’s happening in math class with parents and other in-school support professionals.
Educators with a special education teacher in the classroom regularly benefit from other considerations in their approaches to both planning and teaching. IM v.360 offers a range of planning supports, including guides and checklists, to help educators prepare an engaging, accessible learning environment. A co-teacher fluent in both math standards and disability descriptors might use the Standards by Lesson and Lessons by Standard guides to identify students who may need targeted support in a given unit. The Unit at a Glance and Assessment Guidance documents provide more specifics about the concepts students need to master and when. These materials are wonderful guides to use during co-teacher, professional learning communities (PLC), and departmental planning sessions.
Let’s explore more strategies for classrooms with this set up by looking at an Algebra 1 lesson.
Lesson Spotlight: Algebra 1 Unit 5 Lesson 6
In this lesson, there is a set of sentence frames to use to build communication as well as a recommendation to use color coding. There are many possible options for each of these supports. In an inclusion class (students with and without disabilities are grouped together), there may be enough students who may benefit from a support to make it useful for the whole class. For instance, table tents with sentence frames can be displayed at each group of desks. This allows both the content teacher and the special educator to point students toward the sentence frames while circulating, without singling out students who need the extra support.
Another approach when there are two adults in the room is to strategically group students. The preceding lesson (Unit 5 Lesson 5) ended with a “press pause” cool-down. If any students struggled with function notation at the end of Lesson 5, intervention is needed before they engage in Lesson 6.
During Activity 3, the teachers can divide the class into groups to provide additional support.
Group 1: Students in need of intervention, as identified by the Lesson 5 cool-down
- Review the cool-down from the previous lesson.
- Complete the activity with frequent teacher check-ins.
Group 2: Students who would benefit from an accommodation in visual-spatial processing
- Complete the activity with explicit instructions on how to make use of color to clearly communicate the connections they’re making among the graph, the descriptions, and the function notations.
While the remaining groups might not need the organizational support of color coding, students outside of Group 2 should have access to markers, if they would like to use this strategy. Similarly, all students are encouraged to engage with the Are You Ready for More? extension problem after completing the task.
Supports aren’t exclusively for students with disabilities, and extension problems aren’t reserved solely for an “advanced” group. An educator looking to amplify the voices and stories of all of their math storytellers may find configurations of these supports that best accommodate their students. By planning ahead, considering the needs of individual students, and using the IM v.360 resources, we can empower all math storytellers to share how they understand, use, and enjoy mathematics, in whichever modality they are able.
When considering just-in-time supports for students with disabilities, IM v.360 looks to UDL strategies. Some of these strategies are embedded throughout the curriculum for all students:
- consistent lesson structure
- developing concepts from concrete to abstract
- individual, partner, small-group, and whole-group work time and discussions
- opportunities for students to apply mathematics to real-world contexts
The Access for Students with Disabilities supplemental strategies include additional supports for engagement, representation, and action and expression that teachers can apply at their discretion. As we’ve discussed, these supplemental strategies can be used with the whole class, a small group, or an individual student. The strategies are intended as examples of the types of accommodations that students may benefit from, and we hope they inspire teachers to continually use the strategies that meet students’ needs throughout the course.
Conclusion
Educators should be intentional about creating learning environments where every student has access to necessary support, can functionally participate in conversations, and is able to reasonably demonstrate self-determination in their learning. For teachers of special populations, this intentionality necessitates pre-planning with education specialists and Individualized Education Program (IEP) teams.
By incorporating UDL principles, the IM curriculum can be an integral part of a dream team of support that helps all students, especially those with disabilities, engage in an inclusive learning environment. Ultimately, educators should also consider their own understanding of their students’ needs, the IEPs or 504 plans, and their district’s existing Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS).
Next Steps
- This blog is much more likely to reach content specialists. Math educators—please share this post with your special education counterparts! We hope the ideas here spark discussion and inspire new forms of collaboration.
- In addition to this post, teachers working with special populations may also enjoy: Using IM Algebra 1 Extra Support Materials to Address Unfinished Learning: An ExampleExtra Supports for Algebra 1: The Gateway Resources
Tina Cardone
Specialist, 9-12 Content
Tina Cardone was the geometry lead for the first version of the IM high school curriculum and is now a content specialist for IM. Before that, Tina spent over 10 years teaching high school math at public schools in Massachusetts. Tina organized the ideas of an online community that networked on Twitter to publish the book Nix the Tricks in 2013 (followed by a second edition in 2015). Tina has presented at regional and national conferences on nixing tricks in the mathematics classroom, language routines to support student learning, and equity in IM K–12 math. Outside of work, Tina enjoys spending time with Brownie the dog and advocating for chronic illness and disability communities.
Brea Jimenez
Sr. Specialist, Facilitator Certification and Quality Assurance
Brea J. Jimenez (she/her/hers) received a BA in English from Ottawa University in Ottawa, Kansas. She received an MA in Special Education from the California State University of Bakersfield. She is dual-certified in K–12 moderate to severe special education (exceptional children) and early childhood special education. She holds authorizations for English learners and autism populations. She has spent her classroom and administrative career working with Pre-K to 22-year-old students with exceptionalities in a wide variety of inclusion, self-contained, and transition settings. Brea is currently the Senior Specialist of Facilitator Certification and Quality Assurance at IM. She has a passion for universally accessible classroom design and empowering all learners to have agency over their educational experiences. She is a zealous knitter, the mother of two children and two cats, and proud partner to a U.S. Navy Veteran.
