By Bill McCallum, IM CEO and cofounder As CEO and cofounder of Illustrative Mathematics, Bill McCallum shares his reflections from the 56th Annual NCSM Conference and NCTM’s 2024 Annual Meeting & Exposition in Chicago,...
By Claire Neely, Senior Implementation Specialist Illustrative Mathematics’ redesigned IMplementation Reflection Tool (IRT) is a powerful, non-evaluative resource intended to shape the way your school adopts and implements...
By Jen Hawkins, IM Certified® Facilitator and Independent Curriculum Implementation Specialist As I sat at the table in the back of the room, I watched the teacher reveal an image connected to the lesson’s warm-up. She told...
By William McCallum, IM CEO You asked, we listened, and now, we are preparing to deliver! I am excited to tell you today about our new curriculum, IM 360, which was developed based on your thoughtful feedback. IM 360 is the...
By Deborah Peart, Founder and CEO of My Mathematical Mind If we want students to Know, Use, and EnJOY mathematics, it begins with teachers. Joyous math experiences are about more than having fun and keeping students happy...
By the IM Team And just like that, school is back in session! Whether you are implementing the IM curriculum for the first time or getting a fresh start as you experience year two or three, the beginning of the year is the...
By the IM Team As summer winds down, we understand that you are not rushing toward the finish line of your summer break. Hopefully, there have been many lazy days, trips or adventures, and time spent with family and...
By Dr. LaToya Byrd, IM Senior Director, Professional Learning Implementation and Talent The excitement is building. Can you feel it? Conference season is almost here! Math conferences create opportunities for educators to...
By Courtney Ortega, IM Certified® Facilitator Learning takes time. Students make connections, deepen their understanding, and address misunderstandings. It can make the learner feel vulnerable. “When we learn, we actively...
By William McCallum, IM CEO Here at IM we are excited by and proud of the reception IM K–12 Math™ is getting. As more and more districts adopt it, we are thinking about how to support them. What are the next steps? Our...
By Courtney Ortega, IM Certified® Facilitator I was recently in a meeting where a participant declared, “Grade 8 and Algebra 1 basically have all the same standards.” Have you ever wondered this yourself? Have you heard...
By Lizzy Skousen, 6–12 Curriculum Writer, IM Certified® Facilitator During a problem-based lesson, the teacher does a lot of listening while monitoring student learning. When teachers are introduced to a problem-based...
2022 was a remarkable year of growth and achievement at IM. Our employees are energetic, inspired, and committed to our vision of a world where all learners know, use, and enjoy mathematics. I couldn't be more proud of what...
By Joseph Koelsch, IM Certified® Facilitator “I’ve said it before: equations are the devil’s sentences. The worst one is that quadratic equation, an infernal salad of numbers, letters, and symbols.” - Stephen Colbert Did...
By Sonja Twedt, IM Certified® Facilitator, 6–12 Special Projects Course Assistant Are you an instructional coach or teacher leader in a district that is adopting Illustrative Mathematics? If so, you’ve likely found yourself...
Dionne Aminata, Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives, Marketing, Illustrative Mathematics Rolanda Baldwin, Vice President of Mathematics, UnboundEd Illustrative Mathematics and UnboundEd both agree that achieving racial...
Members of the Illustrative Mathematics team recently attended two national conferences for math educators: NCSM (Sept 26–28, 2022) in Anaheim, CA, and NCTM (Sept 28–Oct 1, 2022) in Los Angeles. We enjoyed meeting so many...
by Joe Herbert “These problems are great, but they’re just so wordy. My students can’t handle all that reading!” Does this feel familiar? If so, you’re not alone! Many students and teachers struggle with the language...
How do you get ready for a new school year? There is a lot to do, physically and emotionally. We hope you start the 2022–23 school year feeling rested, rejuvenated, and prepared. To support you, we have curated a collection...
By Tina Cardone Geometry class can feel like word salad, with a heavy sprinkling of notation on top. Students need to both process and produce mathematical language in the vast majority of the tasks they work on. Here is a...
“Any time we go to the next unit I'm looking for what we can use, tweak, modify, build off of. Everyone is always checking the hub—it has saved us so much time in terms of planning this year.” “It made my ability to support...
By Vanessa Cerrahoglu and Danielle Seabold, IM Certified® Facilitators Learners have brilliant mathematical ideas. How we teachers use IM 6–12 Math™ impacts how often students and teachers recognize this brilliance....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
By the IM Team Educators still face a great deal of uncertainty heading into the 2021–22 school year. Maybe you’ve already started planning for it. Maybe you’ve avoided planning for it. Maybe your school year has already...
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...
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...
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...
By Jennifer Willson, Director, 6–12 Professional Learning Design In my role at IM, working with teachers and administrators, I am asked to help with the challenges of implementing an IM curriculum. One of the most common...
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....
by William McCallum Newspapers are full of graphs, far more than 10 or 20 years ago. Indeed, I have a graph to show that! (Source, Priceonomics) And yet I wonder how often readers see graphs as pictures illustrating a...
by David Petersen and Kate Nowak In our previous post, we described how we are thinking about planning for next fall. We are also creating some new resources to support users of IM K–12 Math in the fall. Some of this is to...
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...
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...
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...
By David Petersen, Lead Curriculum Writer and Kate Nowak, Director of K–12 Curriculum Strategy This school year has been strange and stressful, and there is uncertainty about what next year will look like. Due to school...
By Liz Ramirez Which students are experiencing success in today’s “distance learning”? What barriers do other students face? While virtual learning platforms have made it possible for some live instruction to continue...
Some schools are sending home printed packets and establishing teacher office hours by phone. Some are conducting their regular class schedule, but online. And lots are doing something in between. We understand that it is...
“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...
The first thing you have to understand is that asking people to model with mathematics makes them mad. Not in all contexts, though! At a social gathering with a generally amiable and curious group of people, you might try...
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...
Last year, we put together some reading to help people get started planning their year with IM 6–8. Now, we have another year’s worth of blog posts to choose from, plus a shiny, new high school curriculum! So once again,...
While families arrive with different school experiences and perspectives on what “doing math” means, they often share common questions: What do I need to know to set my child up for success in math this year? and How can I...
IM Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2 courses are now available to all. Alright, folks, this is not a drill: IM 9–12 Math is now available to all. By Ashli Black So now what? To help folks dive into the curriculum, we’ve...
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