By Timesha Brooks, Senior Specialist, Professional Learning Design In Part 1, we named the elephant in the room: math anxiety among teachers and how it shapes classroom instruction. Now, we turn to the heart of the work—how teachers build confidence, what helps them...
By Timesha Brooks, Senior Specialist, Professional Learning Design We often talk about math anxiety when it comes to students. But there's an elephant in the professional development room we rarely name—and even more rarely design for. It’s something nearly every...
By Rabell Afridi, Math Coach and Lindsey Duff, Gr. 3 SEI Teacher In our multilingual 3rd grade math classroom one afternoon, students hurried to their desks, eager to get started on a problem. Before they were even seated, they were already debating their ideas. The...
By Lindy Olejniczak, PK–6 Content Specialist This past year, I was playing with my friend’s 2.5-year-old sons. The “game” started with bringing colored balls from a ball pit and tossing them to me. As I caught each one, I began arranging them in different ways. At one...
By Sarah Caban, Director, PK–12 Learning Experiences and Dionne Aminata, Former Grade 2–5 Lead WriterWhen do students practice their math facts? How is math fluency assessed?We appreciate these questions for a couple of reasons: 1) We took great care in thinking...
By the Illustrative Mathematics team California educators are navigating big shifts in math instruction, grounded in access, coherence, and deeper student understanding. California AccessIM was designed to meet this moment. Available to all educators at...
By the Illustrative Mathematics team The gains in math achievement experienced by District 11 in New York City Public Schools (NYCPS) are not the result of a sudden shift or a one-year initiative. They reflect years of deliberate, system-level work focused on...
Catherine Castillo, Sr. Specialist, Implementation Enablement Claire Neely, Sr. Specialist, Implementation Enablement “Both rigorous performance evaluation and frequent formative feedback are important building blocks for promoting a strong teacher workforce. Mounting...
By Meredith Dadigan Abel, IM Certified® Facilitator, K-5 Teachers are the heartbeat of any new math curriculum—they bring lessons to life, adapt to student needs, and make learning happen every day. But behind the scenes, administrators are the backbone, ensuring the...
By Tabitha Eutsler, 3rd Grade Teacher “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.” This was my conversation with our math coordinator after my first few days of teaching IM K–5...
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