Welcome and thank you for bringing the Illustrative Mathematics (IM) curriculum into your classroom. This Course Guide is meant to serve as a reference for you throughout the year. In it, you can learn more about problem-based teaching and learning, how a typical lesson is meant to flow, assessment guidance, dependencies between units, and more. You’ll also find information specific to the course, such as the scope and sequence for the year and the glossary, to help with planning.

To help orient you to the general structure of the course, here are some helpful insights:

• Each course contains nine units. Each of the first eight units is anchored by a few big ideas in grade-level mathematics. The last unit in each course is structured differently, and contains optional lessons that help students apply and tie together the big ideas from the year.
• Units contain 12–28 lesson plans. Each of the first eight units has a diagnostic assessment for the beginning of the unit (Check Your Readiness) and an End-of-Unit Assessment. Longer units also have a Mid-Unit Assessment.
• Each lesson plan is designed to fit within a class period that is at least 45 minutes long. Some lessons contain optional activities that provide additional scaffolding or practice for students. Use these at your own discretion.
• Each lesson includes information about Materials to Gather and Materials to Copy prior to the start of the lesson. As specified in Materials to Copy, photocopy and cut up for students ahead of time the sets of cards or slips of paper required for activities written in card-sort, matching, and information-gap formats.
• A classroom with a digital projector is recommended.
• Teachers and students can access the curriculum in either print or digital format. Students can work solely with printed workbooks or pdfs. Alternatively, if all students have access to an appropriate device, then they can look at the task statements on that device and write their responses in a notebook. If students access the materials this way, support them in keeping the notebook carefully organized so that they can revisit their work later.

To compress three years of content into two:

• We removed some activities that primarily reviewed concepts from prior grades and units. Therefore, accelerated students should either have a strong foundation from K–5 or a plan for catching up on unfinished learning outside of class.
• We removed some activities that provided additional practice or repetition of concepts in class. Therefore, accelerated students should be likely to grasp math concepts on the first presentation, or they should be able to independently use practice problems to check and build understanding.
• We moved some work with mathematical modeling into optional lessons which might be assigned as projects outside of class. Therefore, accelerated students should be interested and motivated to work on challenging mathematics outside of class.

The activities, practice problems, and assessment items within the accelerated courses consist mainly of materials from IM 6–8 Math. Due to how lessons and units are rearranged, some work happens at different places in the course sequence. For example, in IM 6–8 Math v.360, scaled copies are in Grade 7 and dilations and similarity are in Grade 8. In IM 6–8 Math Accelerated v.360, those topics are covered together in Grade 7 Unit 2.

Teacher Notes for IM 6–8 Math Accelerated

Since the lessons, activities, and assessment items for IM 6–8 Math Accelerated v.360 were rearranged and compacted from IM 6–8 Math v.360, notes are included in the accelerated materials to highlight changes for teachers. Teacher Notes for IM 6–8 Math Accelerated v.360 are used for many reasons:

• Adjusting the time allocated to an activity
• Explaining how reorganization affects references to other parts of the curriculum
• Revising activity launches or syntheses to include important parts of activities that are no longer in the course sequence
• Changing an activity’s priority to or from optional

In places where Teacher Notes exist, the instructions supersede other directions for the unit, section, lesson, or assessment where the notes are attached.

For example, the Teacher Note for a lesson in Accelerated Grade 6 Unit 1 says the following:

“Adjust the timing of this activity to 15 minutes.
Give students 2–3 minutes of quiet work time to complete the first problem before sharing with the group. Then tell students to skip the next question that asks about the height of Parallelogram B that corresponds to the base that is 10 cm long. If time allows, include this question as part of the Activity Synthesis. Then give students 3–4 minutes to complete the last question.”

The original activity from IM 6–8 Math v.360 is meant to take 25 minutes. To compress time for the accelerated version, students are instructed to skip a practice question.