Integrated Mathematics (Matematica Meshulevet)
Leading team:
- Prof. Ruhama Even
Project team:
- Dr. Alex Friedlander Coordination
- Dr. Naomi Robinson Coordination
- Elian Ben-Dor Development and PD
- Rachel Bouhadana Development and PD
- Bracha Elias Development and PD
- Tali Furman Development and PD
- Gabriela Goldenberg Development and PD
- Ayelet Gottlieb Development and PD
- Dr. Hadas Nurit Development and PD
- Sara Kiro Development and PD
- Maya Koren Development and PD
- Gila Osruso-Hagag Development and PD
- Edit Pilosof Development and PD
- Ludmila Shpil Development and PD
- Alina Speisky Development and PD
- Dr. Hanna Stein Development and PD
- Dr. Naomi TaiziDr. Naomi Taizi Development and PD
- Rachel Zaks Development and PD
- Prof. Edriss S. Titi Consultant Mathematics
Secretariat and Administration:
Vered ShattensteinBrief
A comprehensive junior-high school mathematics curriculum program that emphasizes problem solving, thinking, and reasoning for all students, as well as connections among mathematical concepts, topics, and domains. The textbooks were written in Hebrew, and then translated to Arabic, as well as converted to a version suitable for the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.
In response to the introduction of a new national junior-high school mathematics curriculum in 2009 by the Ministry of Education, we have developed a comprehensive junior-high school mathematics curriculum program — Integrated Mathematics (Mathematica Meshulevet). The curriculum program emphasizes problem solving, thinking, and reasoning for all students, as well as connections among mathematical concepts, topics, and domains. The development team comprised experienced curriculum developers and teachers. The textbooks were developed in standard/expanded and in limited scope versions, along with a supplementary collection of activities Excelling Rehovot (Metzuyanut Rehovot) for high-achieving students.
The development of each textbook comprised an experimental and a final version. The latter was edited by scientific, pedagogical, language, gender, and graphic editors, and had to be approved by the Ministry of Education in a three-cycle review process that took about 10 months.
The textbooks were written in Hebrew, and then translated to Arabic, as well as converted to a version suitable for the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. A teacher’s guide and other accompanying resources (e.g., assessment items, additional activities, and applets) come to about 10,000 pages.
Developing the complete series of textbooks required seven years of intensive work. The Integrated Mathematics curriculum program is currently used in more than 250 schools throughout Israel, and we provide counseling and support for teachers all over the country via in-service courses and an interactive website hosting nearly 200,000 visits per year (https://stwww1.weizmann.ac.il/math-rehovot).
Each student textbook includes about 30 units; each unit is organized as a series of four or five lessons. The written lessons suggested in the textbooks generally have a similar structure that includes four main parts. First, an introductory problem is presented, whose aim is to motivate students (i.e., create a need for learning a new concept), “set the scene” (i.e., present a context) or provide a “larger picture” of a new concept or tool to be acquired during the lesson. Then three sets of tasks are presented: tasks that lead to the formalization of the new concept or tool, tasks that require students to use and apply various aspects of the formalized concept, and tasks that consolidate the newly acquired knowledge. In addition, tasks that require higher-order thinking, such as reflecting on the learned concept, making connections with other concepts, comparing different solutions, or detecting errors in hypothetical students’ solutions are presented throughout the textbook.