By William McCallum Last week, we had our first large-scale in-person event in quite a while, a training for new and returning facilitators in Baltimore, with over 110 facilitators and 13 employees attending. I gave a...
Towards Coherence
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Professional Learning
IM Curriculum Provides Everything but the Kitchen Sink Needed for Lesson Planning
By Liza Bondurant, IM Certified® Facilitator/Associate Professor Do you spend hours hunting down materials for your lesson plans? How can you be sure the materials are aligned to your standards? How can you make your lesson...
Using IM Algebra 1 Extra Support Materials to Address Unfinished Learning: An Example
By IM Professional Learning Team How do we attend to unfinished teaching and learning, while attending to grade-level expectations? Algebra 1 is often called a “gatekeeper.” Successful completion of Algebra 1 unlocks...
Two Recommendations to Elevate Instruction
By Kate Nowak, IM Vice President of Curriculum Development and Portfolio “The more intensely interested a teacher is in a student’s thinking, the more interested the student becomes in his or her own thinking.”—Eleanor...
Math Language Routines: Discourse with a Purpose
By Dr. Kristen Taylor, IM Certified® Facilitator Math teachers can talk all day about math! We get super excited when we encounter someone else who enjoys these conversations as well. But too many of our students don't get...
Leveraging IM 6–12 Math Teacher Materials to Enhance Access to Grade-Level Mathematics
Illustrative Mathematics (IM) believes each student has brilliant mathematical ideas has experiences and ideas that are valuable can make sense of and solve problems can learn grade-level mathematics How can educators act...
Revisiting Distance Learning with IM K–12 Math™
With the surge of the Omicron variant, many schools are moving back to distance learning. Although we may not be excited to leave our classrooms again, we are better prepared for distance learning this time around. Most, if...
Taking the Long View
By William McCallum A few weeks ago, my wife and I took a 17-day rafting trip through the Grand Canyon. We descended through the layers of rock, from the 270 million year old Kaibab sedimentary layer of chert, dolomite,...
What Does IM Think About Unfinished Learning and Supporting Students with a Variety of Entry Points? (Grades 6–12)
By the IM Team In a class of 25 students, there are 25 different learners with 25 different backgrounds. Students come into the classroom with varied experiences with school, with mathematical content, and with life. While...
Illustrative Mathematics Celebrates 10 Years: Letter from the CEO
2021 marks our 10th anniversary at Illustrative Mathematics, and we couldn’t be more proud to have impacted so many hundreds of thousands of students, teachers, and families since our humble beginnings in 2011. Our business...
Remembering Bob Moses
By William McCallum and Kristin Umland "Math literacy will be a liberation tool for people trying to get out of poverty and the best hope for people trying not to get left behind.” —Bob Moses, 1935–2021 Bob Moses, the civil...
Gifts: A Reflection on Student Thinking
By Elham Kazemi, Co-Author of Intentional Talk and Professor at University of Washington “Gifts from the earth or from each other establish a particular relationship, an obligation of sorts to give, to receive, and to...
Introducing the IM Implementation Reflection Tool
by Liz Ramirez, Director of Implementation “This makes the expectations for what I need to change visible.” “It’s not about the tool. It’s about the conversation using the tool.” Quotes from leaders who participated in IM’s...
Getting Ready for 2021–22: Back to School Blog Posts
By the IM Team Educators still face a great deal of uncertainty heading into the 2021–22 school year. Maybe you’ve already started planning for it. Maybe you’ve avoided planning for it. Maybe your school year has already...
Explorations in IM K–5 Math: Challenges for Curious Students
By Jen Hawkins and Mike Nakamaye What do we do with curious students who are ready, willing, and able to go further with math ideas? Some students cannot wait to dig deeper into the mathematics they are studying in class....
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...
Growing with the IM Community Hub
By Portia Gibbs Roseboro, Britnee Wright, Justin Brennan The IM Community Hub, affectionately known as “The Hub,” was created to support educators using the IM Curriculum in navigating what teaching looks like now....
Preparing for the Unknown: Our Journey to Virtual Facilitation
By Ashley Powell and Moniquea Willingham The excitement and nervousness in the room was almost palpable! There were approximately forty facilitators present for the 3-day IM K–5 Curriculum training in Dallas, Texas. We...
English Learners and Distance Learning: Math Language Routines
by Vanessa Cerrahoglu, Jennifer Wilson, and Liz Ramirez We envision creating a world where learners know, use, and enjoy mathematics. Knowing and using math goes beyond calculating and evaluating. We create purposeful...
Coming Together Around Distance Learning
By William McCallum I can't imagine what it must feel like right now to be a teacher facing the uncharted territory that is the coming school year. Will I be teaching 100% online, or have some face-to-face interaction with...
English Learners and Distance Learning: Compare and Connect
By Vanessa Cerrahoglu, Jennifer Wilson, and Liz Ramirez We envision creating a world where learners know, use, and enjoy mathematics. Knowing and using math goes beyond calculating and evaluating. We create purposeful...
English Learners and Distance Learning: Co-Craft Questions
By Jennifer Wilson and Liz Ramirez We envision creating a world where learners know, use, and enjoy mathematics. Knowing and using math goes beyond calculating and evaluating. We create purposeful opportunities for students...
English Learners and Distance Learning: Clarify, Critique, Correct
By Jennifer Wilson and Liz Ramirez We want to acknowledge that we are all in different situations that shape how we respond to the call to adapt our teaching to fit a model for distance learning. This impacts the access we...
Using math to make decisions in today’s pandemic
By William McCallum At Illustrative Mathematics, our mission is to create a world where all learners know, use, and enjoy mathematics. This is not just an idle wish, one that we have because we love mathematics. Sometimes...
Could you—or someone you know—be our newest IM Certified Facilitator? The Critical Role of IM Certified Facilitators.
“What I find distinguishes IM is that IM Certified Facilitators are uniquely supported by the IM authoring team to ensure the integrity of the curriculum remains intact.” By Kiana Porter-Isom I was always interested in...
Learning through Teaching
By William McCallum I was in New Orleans a couple of weeks ago visiting a school using IM 6–8 Math and was inspired by the efforts the school was making to implement problem-based instruction. I saw teachers at different...
Creating an Accessible Mathematical Community with IM K–5: the power of “yet” for students and adults
Does the perfect elementary math curriculum exist? Armed with a growth mindset and the Alpha IM K–5 curriculum, teachers in Ipswich Public Schools push their thinking to reach all mathematicians. By Maureen D. O’Connell I...
Explicit Classroom Norms to Teach Kids How to Learn From Solving Problems
This blog post is the fourth in a series of four blog posts exploring the student experience of problem-based learning. The first three posts are available here: (1) “How Do Students Perceive Problem-Based Learning?” (2)...
First Impressions: The First Units in IM K–5 Math
“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Maya Angelou By Kristin Gray When I think back to my 8th grade math class, I...
Concrete Representations that Give Students a Way to Get Started
This blog post is the third in a series of four blog posts exploring the student experience of problem-based learning. The first two posts are available here: “How Do Students Perceive Problem-Based Learning?” and “Inviting...
Inviting Students to the Mathematics
How do we invite students to the mathematics, and explicitly signal to kids that they have ideas that matter in math class? By Max Ray-Riek In this series of blog posts, the first of which is available here, we’re exploring...
How Do Students Perceive Problem-Based Learning?
Does problem-based learning mean students need to forget everything they knew about how to act in math class? By Max Ray-Riek As a teacher, and then as a coach and teacher-educator, I’ve been thinking for a long time about...
Realizing the promise of open resources, part II
By William McCallum In my first post on the topic of realizing the promise of open educational resources, I described the IM Certified program. Our partners offer multiple versions, including a free online version and...
Making Sense of Distance in the Coordinate Plane
By Linda Richard, Curriculum Writer I used to teach my high school students a catchy song to memorize the distance formula. We all had fun goofily singing this song. My students hummed it to themselves during tests and...
NCSM NCTM Recap
Illustrative Mathematics It was great to see so many of you at NCSM and NCTM in San Diego. If we missed you, or you weren’t able to attend, read our NCSM and NCTM round-up below. We enjoyed the conversations we had with...
What is a Measurable Attribute?
By Kristin Umland,VP Content Development A great conversation I had with the IM elementary school curriculum writing team got me thinking: What is a measurable attribute? That is, when given an object, what can we measure...
Presenting IM Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2
By Kate Nowak When I was teaching high school mathematics, my local colleagues and I spent a whole lot of time creating problem-based lessons. We were convinced that this style of instruction was a good way to learn, but...
Representing Subtraction of Signed Numbers: Can You Spot the Difference?
By Greta Anderson & Patti Drawdy, IM Certified Facilitator I read the lesson three times through, but was still unsure why the number line below shows $3 - 7$. My aha moment arrived courtesy of the grade 1 standards....
Planning Lessons for a Block Schedule
By Jennifer Wilson and Vanessa Cerrahoglu Update 2021 - August: IM has created block schedule guidance for IM 6-8 Math v.III and IM 9-12 Math v.I. Get unit guidance on how to customize the curriculum to fit your block...
What is problem-based instruction?
By William McCallum When I was a child, I used to get puzzle books out of the library. One of the puzzles was the twelve-coin problem, the most difficult of all coin weighing problems. My mother and I worked on it...
The Power of Noticing and Wondering
My first years of teaching, I worried my students looked at me much like Ben Stein as the teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I cringe to think about the series of monotonous and leading questions I strung together to a...
Building a Mathematical Classroom Community
Classroom environments that foster a sense of community that allows students to express their mathematical ideas—together with norms that expect students to communicate their mathematical thinking to their peers and...
The IM 6–8 Math Curriculum Changed My Math Methods Experience
By Anna Polsgrove When I first started the Math Methods course at University of California, Irvine, all of my ideas on how to learn math took a complete 180. During the first two months, a million questions swirled in my...
NCSM and NCTM 2018 Roundup
It was great to see so many of you at NCSM and NCTM. If we missed you, or you weren’t able to attend, read our NCSM and NCTM round-up below. We enjoyed the conversations we had with those of you that are using the IM 6–8...
What is an instructional routine?
By William McCallum and Kate Nowak People use routines for all kinds of things. Routines give structure to time and interactions. People like structure. When a child comes home from school, there might be a routine. She...
Learning Goals and Learning Targets
By Jennifer Wilson One of your students is asked, “What are you learning about today in class?” How does your student respond? “Nothing” “Math” “The questions on this worksheet” “Deciding if two figures are congruent”...
Warm-up Routines With a Purpose
By Kristin Gray As a teacher, curiosity around students’ mathematical thinking was the driving force behind the teaching and learning in my classroom. To better understand what they were thinking, I needed to not only have...
Adapting Problems to Elicit Student Thinking
By Jody Guarino As a teacher, I constantly wonder how I can elicit student thinking in order to gain insight into the current thinking of my students and leverage their thoughts and ideas to build mathematical...
The Illustrative Mathematics Team Reflect on the 5 Practices
The entire Illustrative Mathematics team spends a lot of time reading about teaching and learning. Most recently, we have been reading—some of us rereading—and reflecting on the 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive...
Using the 5 Practices with Instructional Routines
By Robin Moore As a coach, how can I help teachers structure their lesson-planning in order for students to unpack their mathematical understandings? This question is always at the forefront of my mind as I reflect on my...
How the 5 Practices Changed my Instruction
By Alicia Farmer I am the type of teacher you want on your teaching team. I am the person that can remember vast amounts of details, predict potential obstacles, and meet any and all deadlines. My organized personality is...
The 5 Practices Framework: Explicit Planning vs Explicit Teaching
“Whether we’re asking students to analyze a historical event, reflect on a text, or work toward a scientific discovery, we need to give students a chance to dig into the ideas on their own first.” By Kristin Gray I’ve come...
Welcome to the new Illustrative Mathematics blog!
In continually moving forward with our vision of creating a world where learners know, use and enjoy mathematics, the Illustrative Mathematics team is so excited to announce the launch of our official blog! Our blog will be...
Ways of thinking and ways of doing
By William McCallum Somewhere back in days of Facebook fury about the Common Core there was a post from an outraged parent whose child had been marked wrong for something like this: $$ 6 \times 3 = 6 + 6 + 6 = 18. $$...
The Structure is the Standards
Co-authored by Bill McCallum, Jason Zimba, Phil Daro You have just purchased an expensive Grecian urn and asked the dealer to ship it to your house. He picks up a hammer, shatters it into pieces, and explains that he will...
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