Everyday Mathematics, a program developed by The University of Chicago, is used for the core curriculum in grades K-5. The students have many opportunities to learn through group projects, labs, manipulatives, and games. Each week there are a variety of ways that students are taught mathematics… there are whole-group and small-group lessons; movement lessons (dancing the bunny hop to learn about medians in a set of data, or pretend snowboarding to learn about 90o and 180o angle turns); art lessons (origami to review polygon shapes); story book lessons (reading and discussing Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi by Cindy Newslinger); and action labs (calibrating containers or playing PIG to determine the probability of winning or losing based on who goes first).

Students in grades 6th, 7th, and 8th are offered a choice of four math courses: Pre-Algebra, Algebra I, Algebra II, and Geometry. Additional courses are offered on an as-needed basis. While students enjoy hands-on labs and logic problems each week, note-taking is incorporated into main lessons as the students advance through each course. Learning to organize a math notebook and learning how to study for a math test is a focus that our former students say has served them well.