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 understandings for the class. First, I need a task that...
Professional Learning
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 Mathematics Discussions by Mary Kay Stein and...
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 work as an instructional coach. Most times, I...
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 apparent everywhere in my classroom. From...
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 to think that approaching a lesson plan is...
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 a space where our math community of learners...
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: $$ 6 \times 3 = 6 + 6 + 6 = 18. $$ Apparently the child was supposed to do $$ 6 \times...
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 send one piece a day in an envelope for the...
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