By Cristina Roof, Math Specialist, Lexington Public Schools What are students thinking as they sit on the rug during a whole-class lesson? How much are they learning? How much are they simply just sitting quietly in their own world? These questions became the focus of...
By Sarah Caban, Director, PK–12 Learning Experiences A snow day. An assembly schedule. A class that needs more time to build understanding before moving on. Suddenly, you’re behind and asking yourself: Should I . . . rush the next lesson? skip activities? cut...
By the Illustrative Mathematics team When we think about math class, it’s easy to picture students sitting at desks, working through problems on paper or screens. But some of the most powerful math learning happens when students are moving, talking, gesturing, and...
By Timesha Brooks, Senior Specialist, Professional Learning Design In Part 1, we named the elephant in the room: math anxiety among teachers and how it shapes classroom instruction. Now, we turn to the heart of the work—how teachers build confidence, what helps them...
By Timesha Brooks, Senior Specialist, Professional Learning Design We often talk about math anxiety when it comes to students. But there's an elephant in the professional development room we rarely name—and even more rarely design for. It’s something nearly every...
Catherine Castillo, Sr. Implementation Specialist Brea Jimenez, Sr. Specialist, Facilitator Certification and Quality Assurance What do you notice about this NCTM framework for mathematics teaching? What do you wonder? You likely noticed that four of these teaching...
By Anita Crowder, PhD, Senior Director of Impact Research An ideal Illustrative Mathematics (IM) classroom is one where students’ curiosity drives learning, their feedback shapes instruction, and their identities are embedded in every mathematical task. Student voice...
Jennifer Cullen, Math Instructional Coach/Interventionist, Hortonville Area School District How do you transform math instruction to reach every student—from those who struggle to those who soar? We recently sat down with Jennifer Cullen, an experienced instructional...
Deepa Bharath, District Instructional Lead Teacher, Mathematics at Cambridge Public Schools Sarah Caban, Interim Director, K–5 Teacher Learning at Illustrative Mathematics “Illustrative Mathematics is a problem-based curriculum that fosters the development of...
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...
to the IM Blog and Newsletter
