Using Illustrative Mathematics

Illustrative Mathematics is a website I have been using on a near daily basis to focus on specific standards and concepts with students. The advantage of using this website is I can easily pull up a problem for each student. Each student I teach is on their own individualized curriculum, thus it is time intensive designing activities and assessments for every student on every day.

www.illustrativemathematics.org

Illustrative Mathematics provides guidance to states, assessment consortia, testing companies, and curriculum developers by illustrating the range and types of mathematical work that students experience in a faithful implementation of the Common Core State Standards, and by publishing other tools that support implementation of the standards.

Typically I will search through their database, find the right illustration and print out the first sheet to the size of an entire piece of paper. The problems have 3 or 4 parts usually so they can be time intensive, draw upon numerous skills and involve having to make charts of graphs. Here are a few examples:

1. Kimi and Jordan

This problem I use with students who are beginning to make the transition from Pre-Algebra to Algebra. The rates have context. The tables are laid out in a readable format. Students with experience generating equations won't have much trouble. When it comes to sketching the graphs, students can use the tables or the equation.

2. Adding Fractions with Common Denominators

It is easy enough to give students a worksheet with 20-30 problems adding fractions with common denominators. Once a student realizes the mechanics of the exercise, this should be done rather quickly without much thought. I love how this problem slows that process down. There is again a context, the answer isn't a whole number, the answer has to be translated into a meaningful number and then a picture has to be drawn which should clearly determine whether the student is comfortable with adding fractions or merely grasps the mechanics of adding the numerators.

I highly recommend checking out this site and adding it to your teaching repertoire. It is a definite time saver and comes with high quality questions that demand going beyond the simple mechanics of mathematics.