Last year, we launched Illustrative Mathematics (IM) across all 25 of our 5th and 6th-grade math classrooms. As we shared in our initial blog post, we adopted IM because of its rich problem-based approach, focus on student discourse, and alignment to rigorous standards. One year into implementation, we’ve learned a great deal both about what’s working and where we need to adapt.

This post shares our reflections from year one, the feedback we heard from teachers and leaders, and the strategic updates we are ma (opens in a new tab)king for the 2025–26 school year. Our hope is that these insights will help other educators who are implementing IM, whether you’re just starting out or refining your approach.

What We Learned from Year One

To monitor our IM implementation, we conducted walkthroughs, interviewed leaders and teachers across the network, and reviewed student outcomes. Here’s what we found:

Teachers consistently highlighted the powerful ways IM shifted classrooms toward student voice and deeper conceptual learning. Bridget Walsh, Dean of Curriculum & Instruction at Camden Prep, captured this shift:

“Students are taking more risks in math. They’re more willing to put an idea out there, even if it’s not perfect. The problem-solving structure has also made math feel less about getting the right answer right away and more about exploring together — the focus is the process, not the product.”

Key Benefits of IM:

• Increased opportunities for mathematical discourse and problem solving
• More group work and collaboration that fosters community
• Hands-on learning that deepens conceptual understanding

At the same time, teachers also surfaced real challenges. For example, while discourse elevated student voice, Faith Bain Lucey, a 6th-grade math teacher at Rochester Prep, noted how it sometimes left students without closure: "In discourse, students were exploring three or four different strategies for the same problem, but many were leaving class without clarity on which strategy to use and when, or what the key takeaway of the discussion was. Sometimes discourse dominated class time."

Other teachers pointed out how pacing and structure sometimes worked against mastery. Julie Davis, a math teacher at Uncommon Kings, explained: "Students were leaving lessons without that moment of ‘I can do this on my own.’ The ideas were there, but they needed more reps to feel confident and ready to apply what they learned.”

Key Challenges of IM:

• Too few moments of direct instruction to clarify and codify ideas
• Gaps in prior knowledge made it difficult for some students to access tasks
• Limited independent practice left some students without mastery

The big takeaway: IM brought powerful shifts in student engagement and conceptual learning, but without some structural changes, it risked leaving behind students who needed more explicit teaching and practice. These insights are guiding the revisions we are making for the 25-26 school year.

Strategic Revisions for 2025–26

We are making three key changes to our 5th and 6th-grade math programs: 

1.Refine the Daily Lesson Structure

Lessons with multiple core tasks and minimal independent practice left students without a clear sense of mastery. When a lesson focuses on multiple ideas simultaneously, students may engage deeply in discussion but leave without fully internalizing or practicing any single concept. To address this, every lesson will now include:

• Warm-Up (5-10 min)
• One Core Task (20 min)
• Independent practice (20 min)
• Exit Ticket (5-10 min)

This means we are cutting 1-2 daily tasks from the IM curriculum. We know that a clearer focus (1 task instead of multiple) and more independent practice time will build students’ confidence, give them an opportunity to solidify their understanding, and provide the repetition they need. 

2. Incorporate Direct Instruction, When Appropriate 

While IM is built on exploration and problem-based learning, we believe students also need explicit teaching (“Grapple first, name later.”) Last year, students spent too much time exploring without enough opportunities to clearly name and consolidate their learning. To address this, our 25-26 curriculum will intentionally balance explore/inquiry and I Do / We Do / You Do moments. We’ll leverage Direct Instruction at the end of a section or unit to accomplish the following:

• Explicitly teach a helpful habit
  —For example, teachers will model the importance of starting with a formula and showing line-by-line work when solving a 6.G.A.1 area problem

• Clearly name one method to be more efficient than others
  —For example, counting cubes is always a fall-back method to finding the volume of a rectangular prism, but we want our young mathematicians to look for and make use of its layered structure (SMP.7)

• Formalize an algorithm
  —For example, after students use models and reasoning to divide fractions (6.NS.A.1), we’ll encourage students to use the algorithm of multiplying by the reciprocal 

• Introduce a key strategy that IM did not
  —For example, our students have historically demonstrated great success in solving 6.RP ratio problems when they use a proportion to solve, which is a strategy missing from the IM curriculum.

3. Adjust our Tier 2 “Intervention Block” approach

At Uncommon, our “Intervention Block” is additional instructional time focused on math. Students are split into at least 2 groups: One group works directly with the teacher, and the other group uses an EdTech platform, “IXL” for independent digital learning. This year, we want to strategically adjust our Intervention Block to better support students who have trouble accessing IM tasks by doing the following:

• Begin offering our Intervention Block (30 minutes, 3x/week) earlier in the school year
• Using data (Spring 2025 state exam results; 24-25 Interim Assessments, IM’s Pre-Unit assessments) to identify which “focus students” will need the most targeted support and what support they will need
• Leveraging the Intervention Block for different purposes:
  —Remediate previous grade-level procedural fluency skills
  —Reteach previous grade-level concepts
  —Additional Independent Practice time

Final Reflections & Next Steps

One important update: we will pause our rollout of IM to 7th grade. Instead, our focus this year is on strengthening Grades 5 and 6 and ensuring our revisions bring together the best of IM and Uncommon’s proven practices. We know implementation is never “set it and forget it.” Just as our students learn by reflecting and revising, so too must we as educators.

Year one highlighted both the promise and the challenges of IM. With the changes we’re making — including a clearer daily lesson structure with only one core task and dedicated independent practice, intentional direct instruction at the end of units, and a strengthened Tier 2 Intervention Block — we are confident students will experience the richness of problem-based learning while building the clarity, confidence, and mastery that come from focused practice.

As Bridget reminded us, IM has already opened the door for more student voices in math class. Now, with more opportunities for practice and clarity, we’re excited to see our students not only speak mathematics, but master it.