Grades 6–8 Mathematics—Introduction to Connected Mathematics

The educators of the Connected Mathematics Project (CMP) have a collective, overarching goal: to help students understand how important it is to be proficient in the various disciplines of mathematics. Students the world over will one day compete for resources to get ahead. With technological advances and global commerce framing their paths to success, students who have insight and a creative attitude, and who have been disciplined in mathematical reasoning and communication will be better positioned respond to the needs of a global economy.

Specifically, educators of Connected Mathematics seek to guide students to proficiency in these areas of mathematics: reason and communication, vocabulary, forms of representation, materials, tools, techniques, intellectual methods.

Connected Mathematics is a comprehensive middle school mathematics curriculum that provides students with multiple opportunities to develop knowledge and fluency with skills and concepts across mathematical strands. Because the program’s mathematical ideas develop and deepen over the course of three years, students must have opportunities to study mathematics in each strand every year.

Support for Connected Mathematics is demonstrated by these results in 10 years of testing:

• CMP is an effective middle school curriculum that is accessible to all students.
• CMP students do as well as, or better than, non-CMP students on tests of basic skills, and outperform non-CMP students on tests of problem- solving ability, conceptual understanding, and proportional reasoning.
• CMP students can use basic skills to solve important mathematical problems and are able to communicate their reasoning and understanding.
• By the end of grade 8, CMP students show considerable ability to solve non-routine algebra problems and demonstrate a strong understanding of linear functions and a beginning understanding of exponential and quadratic functions.