The Illustrative Mathematics Project

I'm muddling.  I'm mixing, stirring, mentally confused at times, and jumbled.  Then I realize I am muddling through - to achieve a certain degree of success but without much skill, polish, experience or direction.  Thanks dictionary.com for helping me really think through how I feel about adopting the entire Common Core this year and the Ohio Model Curriculum for science and social studies.  I haven't said much here about this huge curriculum change in my life and those of my students because I was muddling but I think it's important for people to know muddling is part of change and change takes time.

The Illustrative Mathematics Project is a recent resource I found this week on the web I think very worthy of any classroom teacher's time.  The Illustrative Mathematics Project is going to be consulting with the creators of materials, test and curriculum developers.  The Illustrative Mathematics Project is also going to be a place to submit ideas to share with others and reflect on the tasks on a more global scale.  I'm not sure I'm excited about any of those things, right now.  Maybe later.

However, what I absolutely love about this website is the organization and the ideas shared to help classroom teachers implement content standards.  Here's the path I took to find a great activity which I used for a Morning Meeting activity.  On the left sidebar click K-8 content standards and illustrations.  Illustrations is the word used to show you an example activity/lesson you can do it directly target the standard you are trying to work on.  Then I clicked on Counting and Cardinality and just kindergarten came up because it's only in our Common Core.  Then I clicked on Kindergarten, to find Know number names and count sequences, Count to 100 by 1s and 10s, and then I found an illustrative lesson for counting circles.  My students LOVED counting circles and I didn't know how engaging it would be for them.

I recognize a couple of developers and consultants names for this project but as a group I feel like they understand math, learning, and kids.  I like how you can follow the content standards and find an activity or idea that directly relates to the teaching we are doing.  I can't wait to see the additions each week to help me organize and muddle through.