By Jen Hawkins and Mike Namayake 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....
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What Does It Mean to Use Mathematics?
Feb 22, 2021
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
Jan 12, 2021
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
Dec 21, 2020
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
Jul 27, 2020
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
Jul 7, 2020
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
Jun 25, 2020
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
Jun 15, 2020
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
Jun 8, 2020
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
Mar 16, 2020
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.
Dec 8, 2019
“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
Nov 10, 2019
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
Oct 22, 2019
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
Jul 29, 2019
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
Jul 23, 2019
“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
Jul 18, 2019
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
Jul 8, 2019
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?
Jun 24, 2019
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
Jun 17, 2019
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
May 13, 2019
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
Apr 15, 2019
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?
Apr 8, 2019
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
Mar 18, 2019
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?
Mar 2, 2019
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
Feb 28, 2019
By Jennifer Wilson and Vanessa Cerrahoglu Update 2020-May-04: IM has created a sample plan for a block schedule for Unit 1 for each of IM Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2. (In order to make your own edits to the doc, use...
What is problem-based instruction?
Feb 19, 2019
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
Dec 3, 2018
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
Jul 23, 2018
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
Jun 4, 2018
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
Apr 30, 2018
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?
Apr 10, 2018
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
Mar 5, 2018
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
Feb 27, 2018
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
Feb 18, 2018
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
Jan 30, 2018
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
Jan 22, 2018
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
Jan 16, 2018
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
Jan 9, 2018
“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!
Dec 31, 2017
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
Jun 7, 2017
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
Feb 16, 2017
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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RECENT POSTS
- Explorations in IM K–5 Math: Challenges for Curious Students March 2, 2021
- What Does It Mean to Use Mathematics? February 22, 2021
- Supporting Culturally Responsive Pedagogy with IM K–5 Math™ February 17, 2021
- IM 6–12 Math: Grading and Homework Policies and Practices February 9, 2021
- By the End of Grade 3: Developing Fluency with Multiplication January 25, 2021
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