K–5 Math

A Circumference By Any Other Name…

A Circumference By Any Other Name…

By Becca Phillips You can’t tell a child “there’s no such thing as monsters” because, well, then, why is there a word for it? I was given this advice when my own daughter was an infant, but I’ve thought a lot about it over the years, and how inextricably linked our...

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Building Equitable Learning Environments for Each Student

Building Equitable Learning Environments for Each Student

By Danielle Seabold, IM Certified® Facilitator “All students can be successful in mathematics.” For most mathematics educators, we lean into this. We believe that all students can learn mathematics, and that they can be successful. However, as we focus our lens on the...

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What Does It Mean to Use Mathematics?

What Does It Mean to Use Mathematics?

By William McCallum Our vision at Illustrative Mathematics is a world where all learners know, use, and enjoy mathematics. In my last post I picked up that first verb and talked about what it means to know mathematics. In this post I'd like to talk about what it means...

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Supporting Culturally Responsive Pedagogy with IM K–5 Math™

Supporting Culturally Responsive Pedagogy with IM K–5 Math™

By Dionne Aminata “We are striving to . . . compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man. And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.” Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman Amanda Gorman recited...

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By the End of Grade 3: Developing Fluency with Multiplication

By the End of Grade 3: Developing Fluency with Multiplication

By Zack Hill The major work of grade 3 includes representing and solving problems that involve multiplication and division. Then, by the end of grade 3, students are expected to know from memory all products of two one-digit numbers. What does this look like and how...

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What does it mean to know mathematics?

What does it mean to know mathematics?

By William McCallum A world where all learners know, use, and enjoy mathematics. Perhaps the most mysterious verb in the IM vision—a world where all learners know, use, and enjoy mathematics—is the first one: know.  Knowing mathematics means being able to "do the...

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The Nuances of Understanding a Fraction as a Number

The Nuances of Understanding a Fraction as a Number

By Kristin Gray This was originally posted on Kristin Gray’s personal blog, Math Minds, on November 15, 2020. Student work is just the best. It is the one thing that will always motivate me to write! So, let’s kick this post off with a great work example from grade 3....

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Reading Graphs is a Complex Skill

Reading Graphs is a Complex Skill

by William McCallum Newspapers are full of graphs, far more than 10 or 20 years ago. Indeed, I have a graph to show that! (Source, Priceonomics) And yet I wonder how often readers see graphs as pictures illustrating a point, rather than as texts to be read. A reader...

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