Throughout the curriculum, students experience mathematics as it is used for planning, predicting, designing, exploring, explaining, coordinating, comparing, deciding and for other activities fundamental to human endeavors throughout the world and throughout history. The pedagogy of the curriculum reflects a view of learning as a process of constructing one's own knowledge and emphasizes the importance of the social context of learning for middle school students. Assessment is integrated with learning activities. We select challenges that seem to provide particularly good windows into what students know and don't know and provide teachers with suggested scoring rubrics. Opportunities to use and develop portfolio assessment are provided by investigations that students explore and projects in which students write, design, and build models.
Technology is integrated throughout the curriculum.
In addition to working with calculators, students use a set of general-purpose software tools such as spreadsheet software and dynamic geometry software.