The question first.
Then the teaching.
A complete middle-grades math curriculum built around story-driven investigations. Print and digital materials connect the problem, instruction, practice and assessment across five days.
One standard. A central question.
Five connected days.
Each investigation turns a standard into a central question. A consistent weekly rhythm gives students and teachers a structure they can anticipate.
Thinking Task
The Math Simulator™ poses a real problem. Students work together to identify what they need to know and build an answer before a method is introduced. The teacher listens and asks questions, temporarily holding back a prescribed method to allow student thinking to emerge.
Instruction
Clear instruction, on slides you edit or a video you play. Students return to the problem with visual feedback. Then the teacher formalizes the mathematics, with direct instruction on vocabulary, problem structure, and potential solutions.
Practice
Students rate problems mild, medium or spicy, defend their rating and solve at every level. Practice includes prerequisite, on-grade and challenge problems. The new Practice builder lets teachers choose mild, medium and spicy problems and create a PDF to print for students.
Assessment
Clicker Quiz shows how the class answered each question and where students’ reasoning went off track, so teachers can decide what to reteach. It’s formative assessment that can be acted on in real-time.
Flex Day
Teachers choose the response: reteach, work with a small group, run the Simulation Trainer again or extend the thinking. The materials are ready.
Hot Sauce!
Wilbur Davis tastes hot sauce for a living. Is his perceived heat rating proportional to the Scoville heat rating?
That question carries the week. Students compare representations, work with new values, practice in other contexts and explain what makes a relationship proportional.
Every investigation belongs to a Big Idea: a unit of connected investigations that shows how mathematical concepts build within a grade and from one grade to the next.
Each investigation is connected to a bigger idea.
Students see how.
A single lesson can teach a skill. A Big Idea teaches students how the skills fit together. In Core Curriculum™, every investigation belongs to a Big Idea, a unit built around one central concept.
- Grade 6
Ratios and rates
- Grade 7
Proportional Relationships
- Grade 8
Linear functions
In Grade 7, Hot Sauce! is one of five investigations inside Proportional Relationships. Each week takes on a different standard, from unit rates to equations to percent problems, and each one adds to the same idea.
On Day 4 of every investigation, the Big Idea Connection takes the week’s math somewhere new.
The result is math that builds instead of just following a sequence: students know where an idea came from and where it is going next.
Same math problem.
Different ways in.
Daily language supports, an adaptive Math Language Builder, and accommodations and extensions in each lesson plan. All students work on the same grade-level problem.
Math class is also language class.
Building vocabulary and discourse with visual supports helps multilingual learners access mathematics while strengthening every student’s clarity and precision. Each investigation includes a language support for every day from Day 1 to Day 4: Picture Word Banks, TPR Vocabulary Moves, sentence stems and Clicker Quiz references. Core Curriculum™ lessons are available in Spanish.
Math Language Builder
Starts with the English they have. Builds the math language they need. An adaptive program for multilingual learners. It adjusts with every answer and moves each student toward the academic language of math, one sentence at a time.
Hear it. See it. Read it. Recall it. Students hear each sentence, see it in pictures and color, read it, then recall it to choose. It isn’t translated, on purpose: its job is to grow English, using words from the lessons.
Students start at their own level and move up as they succeed: First words, Simple sentences, Math sentences, Academic language.
Different pathways into the same mathematics.
Support in Core Curriculum™ is planned, not improvised. Graphic organizers, Mathematical Language Routines, Learning Mode, peer pairs, graph paper, calculators and Worked Example videos offer different ways into the mathematics. Captions and read-aloud support access across the platform.
Room to go further
Students can create new representations, explore a standard in another context, use Mastery Mode or write a quiz question of their own while remaining part of the class discussion.
See what students know,
all year long.
Early student responses, Clicker Quizzes, Milestones and daily practice give teachers evidence to guide instruction throughout the year.
Clicker Quiz
See the thinking behind every answer. With Clicker Quiz, teachers can open any question and see exactly how the class responded: who got it, who didn’t, and which wrong answers came up most. Those patterns show where students’ reasoning went off track, so teachers can decide what to reteach, which misconception to address first, and where to start the next class conversation. It’s formative assessment that can be acted on in real-time.
Milestones, student by student growth
See who grew, and on which standards. Milestone pre- and post-tests show how understanding develops. Teachers can examine results by student, question and standard.
Test Trainer Pro
Test Trainer Pro adjusts one question at a time. Students practice for five to ten minutes a day across mathematical domains, while teachers follow performance over time.
The story
keeps going.
The Unfinished Atlas brings the same story-driven investigations and five-day rhythm to Algebra 1. Three friends follow marked New Mexico road maps, testing the calculations they find along the way.
The Dog Bus
Two fields charge different daily fees and per-dog prices. How does the owner know which field costs less?
Our intuition gets us close. Algebra solves it. Students see one relationship as a message, an equation and a graph. Each representation builds intuition about how the two fields’ costs compare. Algebra turns that intuition into a precise answer: the exact number of dogs where the costs are equal, and which field wins on any given day. The investigation addresses A-REI.C.6.
START THE CONVERSATION
The story stays.
The math connects.
From the first question to the classroom conversation, see how story gives the mathematics a context students can return to.
Support for every stage
of implementation.
Professional learning supports teachers as they get started, build practice, reflect on classroom experiences and sustain implementation.
Teacher learning
Teachers experience investigations as learners, then reflect on tasks, questions and student discussion in their classrooms.
Works with your systems:
ClassLink and Clever single sign-on; Canvas LTI 1.3, Google Classroom and Schoology. Browser-based access includes Chromebooks and iPads, with nothing to install.
Read the research and reviewA no-cost
40-day pilot.
Request a sample unit or discuss a no-cost 40-day pilot, shaped around your district with on-site training and support from day one.
Sources and notes
Source: MidSchoolMath 2027 Program Guide, pp. 6–37 and 52–55. Counts and print/digital descriptions refer to the grades 5–8 curriculum unless otherwise stated. Algebra 1 is a separate course for Grade 8.
EdReports reviewed the 2021 edition of Core Curriculum™ for grades 5–8. That review does not cover Algebra 1 or Core Foundations™. Review details and qualifications.
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