6th-8th Grade Mathematics Textbook Materials

About us:

Copyright Information

All materials are completely FREE, open source, printable, and licensed under Creative Commons, cc-by 4.0. Thus we only ask that you attribute the University of Utah with the work herein.

Core Alignment Information

Materials on the site are consistent with the Core Standards. Please visit edreports.org for a review of our work and its alignment with the standards.

Our Philosophical Foundation

Our guiding principle for this work is that the teacher orchestrates the learning in the classroom, not a text or group of standards. We feel that our role is to provide teachers, students and parents with materials that are varied enough so that they can learn from them, adapt them, and use them in a way that makes them comfortable with the authority they have. The controversy over explicit instruction vs. inquiry is, in our view, a distraction from the goal of interconnecting subject matter content and pedagogy.

Our hope is that teachers will organize the classroom around learning in the way that is most suitable to them and their students. Our role is to provide materials that are adaptable by the teacher whatever the pedagogical approach.

We believe success hinges on student engagement in the classroom as well as the influence of outside agents, primarily parents. Thus, the parent resource materials are aimed at engaging parents in the education of students.

Central to active student engagement are a solid and flexible understanding of the subject being taught and the intentions of the course material by those teaching students.  We encourage teachers to start each chapter by talking with their colleagues about the mathematic in the chapter; what are the essential ideas you want students to walk away with? What are the foundational concepts on which you will be building understanding?  What are the pitfalls or misconceptions involved? How does the path laid out in the text fit with what you believe your students need? Lastly, how will you know your students met the goals you set for them?

Our mathematical goals are the CCSS Content Standards listed at the beginning of each chapter. Also listed at the beginning of each chapter is how the Practice Standards uniquely unfold for the given chapter. Throughout the workbook, you will find notes on the mathematical foundations on which our activities are based and, based on our collective experiences working with students, pitfalls and misconceptions we foresee. On the teacher page, you will find the word versions of all our student workbooks. That way you may edit materials to best fit your students’ needs.

Please know, there is more material in each lesson than you likely need.

Tell us who you are!

As we rely totally on grants to write our material, it is extremely important we know who is using our materials for future funding or research.  While we do use analytics to track hits per day/month/year, we have no way of knowing what schools or districts are using our materials in whole or part unless you tell us. If you’re a teacher, school or district leader, it helps when you contact us for the teacher password. Please also fill out the user information link.

Original Funding, Pilot and Writing Team (7th and 8th Grade Materials)

The original 7th and 8th grade textbook materials were created in response to the Math Materials Access Improvement solicitation issued by the Utah State Board of Education in June of 2012. For those materials, Hugo Rossi was the Principal Investigator with Maggie Cummings and David Wiley serving as Co-Principal Investigators. Those materials were a collaborative work with contributors from University of Utah, Utah State University, Snow College, and Weber State College; Jordan, Granite, Davis and Salt Lake City School districts; and many teachers throughout Utah. In particular, we would like to acknowledge the work of the following people and our pilot schools:

Mathematical Foundation Lead Writers:
Hugo Rossi (Lead)
Jonathan Bodrero
Christine Walker

Workbook
Lead Writers:

Maggie Cummings (Lead)
Christina Eischeid
Eva Serr

Technology / Website:
David Wiley
Camille Baker
Drew Ellingson

Other contributors:
Amanda Cangelosi
Allen Jacobsen
Christine Johnson
Brynja Kohler
Heather Young Riddle
Joyce Smart
Emmeline Powell Stoddard
Camilla Perkes Strong

Pilot Schools/Districts:

  • Eisenhower Junior High School; Granite School District
  • Juab Junior High School; Juab School District
  • Albert R. Lyman Middle School, Monticello High School, San Juan High School, Whitehorse High School, Monument Valley High School, Navajo Mountain High School; San Juan School District

6th Grade Funding and Writing Team

Utah State Board of Education funded the 6th grade materials in 2016/2017. Christina Eischeid (writer of 4 chapters) and Eva Serr (writer of 3 chapters) served as lead writers. Maggie Cummings was the PI for the project with Hugo Rossi serving as Co-PI and overseer of the Mathematical foundations. Jonathan Bodrero wrote and edited for both the foundation and workbooks.

Materials Currently Available

Currently, the following updated materials are available:

  • 6th grade:
    • Student Workbook Chapter 1-6 AND fluency chapter
    • Teacher Workbook Chapter 1-6 AND fluency chapter (on teacher page)
    • Mathematical Foundation Chapter 1- 6 AND fluency chapter
    • Parent Edition of the Student Workbook Chapters 1-6 AND fluency chapter
    • Word versions of the Student Workbook Chapters 1-6 AND fluency chapter (on teacher page)
  • 7th grade:
    • Student Workbook Chapter 1-8
    • Teacher Workbook Chapter 1-8 (on teacher page)
    • Mathematical Foundation Chapter 1- 8
    • Parent Edition of the Student Workbook Chapters 1-8
    • Word versions of the Student Workbook Chapters 1-8 (on teacher page)
    • Power Point Lessons for each section (on teacher page)
  • 8th grade:
    • Student Workbook Chapter 1-10
    • Teacher Workbook Chapter 1-10 (on teacher page)
    • Mathematical Foundations Chapters 1-10
    • Parent Edition of the Student Workbook Chapters 1- 10
    • Word versions of the Student Workbook Chapters 1-10 (on teacher page)
    • Power Point Lessons for each section (on teacher page)

Description of the Tools Available

Within this site you will find materials written specifically for the Core Standards for 6th, 7th and 8th grades.

Student Workbook: daily class activities and matching homework sets, an overview of the chapter, Practice Standards connections specific to the chapter, and student self-assessments.

Teacher Workbook: answers to all problems, pedagogical suggestions, and explanations of the mathematical flow of the workbook.

Mathematical Foundation: an explanation of the mathematical content in each chapter.

Parent Edition of the Workbook: the student workbook with selected answers and explanations.

Power Point Lessons for daily lessons: on the teacher page under additional resources, you will find power point lessons aligned with daily sections. These lessons were put together with our partnering district, Granite School District. The lead writer for these is Amanda Johnson.

Acknowledgments and Suggested Additional Resources

We would also like to acknowledge the work of Henri Picciotto who has had an enormous influence on many of the workbook writers. His work may be found at: http://www.picciotto.org
We STRONGLY recommend you visit this site.

Special thanks to University of Utah Department of Mathematics; Utah State Board of Education, in particular Diana Suddreth and Joleigh Honey; and Utah Education Network, in particular Karen Krier and Michelle Dumas.

Granite School District Partnership

For the 2017/2018 academic year, we will be piloting power point lessons, Canvas integration, and Granite District assessments and vocabulary tools created in conjunction with Granite School District. We would like to thank Heather Riddle, Amanda Johnson and Granite School District administration for their work in making this partnership possible.