It aims to have students actually understand math and how it is used. To understand, for example, that a quadratic equation helps demographers project population trends and Red Cross relief workers estimate how many tents they'll need for a refugee camp. It attempts to engage all students, not just the 15 percent who always have done well, by relating math to the world they live in. Thus, percentages are taught with story problems about restaurant tips and the sales tax on CDs. Fractions, ratios and perimeters are taught within the context of movie tickets, brownies and bad cat breath.
Students play games, write in math journals and often work together in small groups.
They no longer sit in neat rows, all facing the blackboard, as the teacher lectures, scratching out the answers to one problem after another. It's MTV math. Mickey Mouse math. But they're not learning anything. Connected Math forces students to make sense of problems, to think.