ABSTRACT
Everyday Mathematics (EM) is based both on research in mathematics education and on the curriculum developers’ experience in teaching mathematics and writing curriculum. Kindergarten Everyday Mathematics, the first year of the curriculum, supports approximately 100 hours of mathematics activities. The program emphasizes playful, verbal interactions and manipulative activities while laying the groundwork for symbolic understanding. Geometry is a major strand in the EM curriculum. In kindergarten and first grade, geometry lessons focus on recognizing, naming, and drawing figures. In higher grades, students analyze properties of figures and begin to make informal deductions based on those properties. The preponderance of school district reports find that EM students maintain traditional levels of proficiency with paper-and-pencil calculation while they achieve at much higher levels in problem solving, geometry, mental arithmetic, data analysis, and logical thinking. When the EM curriculum is implemented, total mathematics achievement usually goes up, often dramatically.
