Grades K-2 Math

Elements of Problem-Based Teaching and Learning

Elements of Problem-Based Teaching and Learning

By Max Ray-Riek, Senior Director, Teacher Professional Learning Our vision at IM is a world where all students know, use, and enjoy mathematics. Educators in our IM Community work toward this vision in classrooms day after...

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IM Kickoff Message for 2024

IM Kickoff Message for 2024

A Look Back and a Look Ahead By Bill McCallum, IM Co-Founder and CEO Hello there, and welcome to 2024! I hope that you have had time to relax and recharge in preparation for all of the excitement that this year will bring....

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Representations in the Story of Mathematics

Representations in the Story of Mathematics

By William McCallum, IM CEO co·her·ence noun the quality of being logical and consistent. the quality of forming a unified whole. One of the things I am proud of about IM K–12 Math™ is its coherence. This shows up in many...

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The Story of Grade 2

The Story of Grade 2

By Mike Henderson Teaching addition and subtraction in grade 2 is a challenging balancing act. As students move from numbers within 100 to numbers within 1,000, they need to use approaches that involve directly representing...

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Towards Coherence

Towards Coherence

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...

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The Story of Kindergarten

The Story of Kindergarten

By Alexandra Clayton Many 5 year olds love to tell you (and show you) how high they can count. This skill of rote counting, saying the counting words in the same order each time, is a lot like singing the ABCs . While...

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The Story of Grade 1

The Story of Grade 1

By Brianne Durst Grade 1 teachers have the awesome responsibility of introducing their students to, and helping them build an understanding of, the structure of our number system. This is no small task! Just think about how...

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Revisiting Distance Learning with IM K–12 Math™

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...

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In the Beginning: Unit 1 in Kindergarten

In the Beginning: Unit 1 in Kindergarten

By Alex Clayton When was the last time you stepped into an entirely new environment? You weren’t sure exactly what was going to happen. There was no one you recognized. How did you feel: Uncertain? Anxious? Hopeful? During...

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Remembering Bob Moses

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...

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Multi-grade Classrooms and  IM K–5 Math™

Multi-grade Classrooms and
IM K–5 Math™

By Jen Hawkins, IM Facilitator and IM K-5 Product Specialist Illustrative Mathematics believes that students can achieve success as mathematical thinkers by working through problems and consolidating their learning through...

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Introducing the IM Implementation Reflection Tool

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...

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A Love for Math Reignited

A Love for Math Reignited

By Michael Ramirez, Senior Coordinator of School Transformation, Elementary Math When I began school as a kindergartener, I absolutely adored math. As a lower elementary school student, I remember relatives asking me what...

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IM K–5 Math: An End and a Beginning

IM K–5 Math: An End and a Beginning

By William McCallum On March 20, 2015, I received the following email: Thank you for submitting your proposals to the K–12 OER Collaborative. We are pleased to advise you that Illustrative Mathematics has been selected as a...

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Culturally Responsive Teaching and Math

Culturally Responsive Teaching and Math

By Asya Howlette, Director of Mathematics and Science at Thurgood Marshall Raise your hand if you have been perplexed by professional learning that told you your class needs to be culturally responsive, but left you...

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What does it mean to enjoy mathematics?

What does it mean to enjoy mathematics?

By William McCallum When I started this series of blog posts on what it means to know, use, and enjoy mathematics, I thought this one would be the easiest. Math is fun, right? How could you not enjoy mathematics? I...

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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...

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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...

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Making Sense of Story Problems

Making Sense of Story Problems

by Deborah Peart, Grade 2 Lead Many people have an aversion to word problems. They cringe at the mention of them. In elementary classrooms, teachers often report that this is what their students struggle with most. When...

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Planning for the Student Experience

Planning for the Student Experience

by Sarah Caban and Kristin Gray Teachers are so amazing and resilient. Amid all of the many thoughts and feelings about the challenges this school year brings, conversation continually revolves around their students.  When...

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IM Talking Math

IM Talking Math

By Kristin Gray Most importantly, I hope everyone is taking care of themselves, their families, and others as much as they are able to during this time. With schools and districts pushing instruction online with a quick...

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Links to Math Resources for Caregivers

Links to Math Resources for Caregivers

Here is a collection of links the content team here at IM has used with our own students and kids to start mathematical conversations, play math games together, explore new topics, come up with projects, and have fun. There...

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When is a number line not a number line?

When is a number line not a number line?

By William McCallum The number line is a seemingly simple object: a straight line with two points marked 0 and 1. Those two points are the seeds of great complexity, however. Whole numbers are located at positions marked...

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The Art of Reflection

The Art of Reflection

“In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers.” —Mr. (Fred) Rogers By Kaneka Turner We are...

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Building a Math Community with IM K–5 Math

Building a Math Community with IM K–5 Math

“I’m not sure this is working. Only five of my students are participating and commenting each day. The rest sit there and look at me.” By Tabitha Eutsler This was my conversation with our math coordinator after my first few...

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Which Vertex is the Center of a Triangle?

Which Vertex is the Center of a Triangle?

By William McCallum I am sometimes asked what is the secret to the success of our curriculum, what is the special property that sets it apart from other curricula. That question is like the one in the title of this blog...

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First Impressions: The First Units in IM K–5 Math

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...

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Realizing the promise of open resources, part II

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...

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Storytelling in the IM K-5 Math Curriculum

Storytelling in the IM K-5 Math Curriculum

By Kristin Gray, Director of K–5 Curriculum & Professional Learning Curriculum "An excellent mathematics program includes a curriculum that develops important mathematics along coherent learning progressions and...

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The Power of Small Ideas

The Power of Small Ideas

By William McCallum, IM President Big ideas are popular in mathematics education, and you can find many lists of big ideas on the web. Some are more thoughtful than others, and I can see how some might be useful for...

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Designing Coherent Learning Experiences K-12

Designing Coherent Learning Experiences K-12

By Kristin Gray, Director of K–5 Curriculum & Professional Learning One challenge in curriculum design is considering all we know and believe to be true about math teaching and learning and translating that into...

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What is a Measurable Attribute?

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...

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IM K-5 Math: Designing for Each Student

IM K-5 Math: Designing for Each Student

By Noelle Conforti Preszler and Kristin Gray In the following activity, think about the students in your classroom. How might each respond? What do you notice? What do you wonder? This activity is the drafted warm-up of the...

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Realizing the promise of open resources

Realizing the promise of open resources

By William McCallum All of our curriculum here at Illustrative Mathematics is released under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license, which allows anyone to "copy and redistribute the material in any medium or...

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The Power of Noticing and Wondering

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...

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Planning for Meaningful Practice

Planning for Meaningful Practice

There is no shortage of available math resources for teachers to use in their classrooms. The difficult and time-consuming job for teachers is weeding through all of the tools to decide which best supports students in...

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IM Preparing for the School Year

IM Preparing for the School Year

There are always so many things to do in preparation for a new school year.  At this point of the summer, to-do lists start getting made, materials get purchased, rooms are organized, and math class planning begins....

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NCSM and NCTM 2018 Roundup

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...

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Warm-up Routines With a Purpose

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...

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Adapting Problems to Elicit Student Thinking

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...

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Misconceptions about Multiple Methods

Misconceptions about Multiple Methods

By William McCallum You may have noticed that I am back to publishing regular blog posts! My goal for now is a blog post every second Wednesday. I am now also trying to answer forum questions promptly. I want to thank the...

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