Flexibility for Alabama Educators and Students

With Big Ideas Math: Modeling Real Life Alabama Course of Study, teachers have the flexibility they need to teach and assess students on the ALCOS standards, and students have flexibility in how they complete their assignments. When combined, teachers can make data-drive decisions to differentiate and meet students’ individual needs.

Differentiation

Teachers can diagnose student proficiencies or gaps, allowing them to remediate and differentiate as necessary.

Access

Using the Homework App, students can readily download assignments created by their teachers and complete them offline.

Dynamic Assessments

With the online Dynamic Assessment System, teachers can create customizable homework and assessments aligned to ALCOS Standards.

"We created this program because we recognized the need for a truly balanced approach to learning with scaffolded instruction and visible learning woven throughout our program."

Ron Larson - Author, Big Ideas Math

High-Impact Teaching Strategies

Many of the things Alabama educators do have a positive effect on student learning, but which ones have the greatest impact? This program purposefully integrates five key strategies proven to have the highest impact on student achievement.

Teacher Clarity

Teacher clarity relates to organization, explanation and guided practice, and assessment of student learning. It can involve clearly communicating the intentions of the lessons and success criteria. Clear learning intentions describe the skills, knowledge, attitudes, and values that the student needs to learn.

Find it in Big Ideas Math

Throughout each lesson and chapter, we provide clear callouts of the learning targets and success critera. Before starting a new topic, we enourage teachers to make the learning target clear. As students explore and learn, continually connect their experiences back to the provided success criteria so they know where they are in their learning.

Feedback

Information provided by a teacher, peer, parent, or the student regarding aspects of one's performance or understanding that reduces the discrepancy between what is understood and what is aimed to be understood.

Find it in Big Ideas Math

Actively listen as you probe for student understanding, being mindful of the feedback that you provide. Through the use of Laurie's Notes, teachers will be able to provide that feedback to see where their students are at in their learning and make instructional decisions for where to go next.

Classroom Discussion

A form of instruction in which students are invited to speak about the topic at hand. It involves much more than a teacher asking a class a question, then another, etc., but involves students discussing with each other, often prompted from an open and not closed set of questions.

Find it in Big Ideas Math

This solidifies student understanding while honing their ability to reason and construct arguments. Students using Big Ideas Math benefit from hearing the reasoning of classmates with Think-Pair-Share, talking with partners through Explorations, and hearing peers critique their own reasoning.

Direct Instruction

Direct instruction refers to instructional approaches that are structured, sequenced, and led by teachers.

Find it in Big Ideas Math

Follow exploration and discovery with explicit instruction to build procedural skill and fluency. Teach with clear Key Ideas and powerful stepped-out Examples that have been carefully designed to meet the success criteria.

Spaced Practice

Students are better able to commit information to memory when they study information in spaced intervals rather than all at once in a "massed" interval. Spaced practice involves practice broken up into a number of shorter sessions, over a longer period of time. Massed practice consists of fewer, longer training sessions.

Find it in Big Ideas Math

In Big Ideas Math, teachers can assign Review & Refresh exercises in every section to provide continual practice on the major topics. Effective homework does not just focus on a single topic of new learning; students must revisit concepts over time so so they can make connections and reach deeper learning.

View eSample

Time to explore! See below for a quick preview of our new and innovative program, for Alabama. In these eSamples you will be able to view a sample chapter from each book as well as the Table of Contents, Front Matter, and more!