IM Certified® Blog
The Story of Grade 3
By Mike Henderson As a former grade 3 teacher, I know first hand how daunting teaching math at this level can be. On top of developing fluency with addition and subtraction within 1,000, students need to learn about new...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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
By Vanessa Cerrahoglu and Danielle Seabold, IM Certified® Facilitators Illustrative Mathematics (IM) believes each student has brilliant mathematical ideas has experiences and ideas that are valuable can make sense of and...
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...
A Thread Through Early Algebra 1
By David Petersen, 6–12 Curriculum Specialist andAshli Black, Director, 6–12 Curriculum The Algebra 1 course in IM 9–12 Math™ begins with a unit on one-variable statistics, a choice that many find surprising. Why start with...
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...
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...
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...
Using IM K–5 Math™ to Support Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI)
By Mike Henderson “The activities require skills that students are not taught prior to doing the activity. They’re expected to just jump right in. Why isn’t there more modeling or re-teaching of basic skills so students can...
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...
Together Apart: Amplifying the “Gift of Student Thinking” in Distance Learning with IM
By Maureen D. O’Connell, IM K–5 Math™ Pilot Teacher,IM Certified® Facilitator for IM K–5 Math “The more intensely interested a teacher is in a student’s thinking, the more interested the student becomes in his or her own...
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...
Unlocking Learners’ Thinking Using the Mathematical Language Routines
By IM Certified Facilitators, Cheryl Fricchione and Rachel Rundstrom Consider this:A child whose primary language isn’t English does not participate in the classroom to the degree that their English-speaking peers do....
FASTalk: Activating the Power of Families to Support Mathematics
By Elisabeth O’Bryon, co-founder and Chief Impact Officer at Family Engagement Lab and Megan Lorio, Managing Editor at Family Engagement Lab Engaging families in meaningful and equitable ways is a cornerstone of student...
Choosing Math Tools and Representations that Work:
“100 chart-less in Grade 2”
By Maureen D. O’Connell, Math Specialist Some math tools and representations help students solve in-the-moment problems. Other math tools and representations help students solve problems and grow their conceptual...
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...
