Math Tailor
Quickly customize Illustrative Mathematics curriculum for your students by adjusting language, creating additional problem sets, and more.
1. Math Tailor basics
What is Math Tailor?
Math Tailor is an AI-powered classroom application that allows you to quickly customize Illustrative Mathematics curriculum to meet the needs of your students. It helps you adjust language, create additional problem sets, and more.
Math Tailor was created by Render, the edtech innovation studio at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
What do Math Tailor lessons consist of?
Math Tailor is designed to work with 6-8 grade math lessons from Illustrative Mathematics (IM) curriculum. They consist of a warm-up, some activities, and several practice problems. You can customize each of these lesson components within Math Tailor.
What are the steps for using Math Tailor?
Select the lesson you’d like to use from the dropdown menu.
Choose how you would want to customize the lesson with an AI tool tile.
Add details about the adjustments you’d like to make.
Explore options to create materials that meet the needs of your students.
2. Using AI tool tiles to customize lessons
What is an AI tool tile?
An AI tool tile is a feature within the selected lesson that enables you to easily add customizations to support your students’ learning needs.
By choosing one of the AI tool tiles, you can specify exactly how you would like to alter or add to parts of the curriculum.
What does each AI tool tile do?
Similar problems: Generate new questions that mirror the style, structure, and difficulty of the existing IM problems, allowing students to have additional practice with familiar problem types. You can select the number of problems to create and add any additional instructions for creating those problems.
Previous skills practice: Generate review problems that target previously learned skills, reinforcing foundational knowledge and helping students connect past learning to new concepts. You can type in specific previous skills you’d like to incorporate into the exercise and add any additional instructions for creating those exercises.
Extension problems: Generate complex problems that build on students' current understanding, challenging them to apply their knowledge in new and advanced ways. You can select the number of problems to create and add any additional instructions for creating those problems.
Problem types: Transform existing questions into various formats to encourage diverse problem-solving approaches. You can select the following problem formats: word problems, multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, and open-ended; and add any additional instructions for the adjustments.
Worked examples: Produce fully solved examples that walk students through the problem-solving process, demonstrating how to approach and resolve similar problems on their own. You can type in the problem-solving method (e.g. working backward, guess and check, solve an equation, etc.) you’d like the worked examples to demonstrate and add any additional instructions.
Guiding questions: Develop additional questions and prompts tailored to guide students through the material to achieve deeper engagement and comprehension during instruction. You can add any additional instructions you’d like to help generate the questions.
Steps to solve: Create detailed, step-by-step guides that outline specific methods students can use to solve problems. You can add any additional instructions you’d like to help generate the steps.
Key terms: Identify and clarify challenging or unfamiliar terms in the lesson, providing concise explanations that help students grasp essential vocabulary. You can also add specific key terms that might be relevant to your classroom, but not included in the specific IM lesson.
Reading level: Adjust the reading level of instructional materials, simplifying or enhancing the text to match students' literacy levels while keeping the mathematical content consistent. You can type in the desired reading level you’d like the IM content to be adjusted to.
Language translation: Select the language to accurately translate math problems to, ensuring that the original context, complexity, and rigor are maintained for multilingual students.
Student interest: Rewrite IM curriculum topics in a way that connects with students' interests and experiences, making the material more engaging and relevant.
Custom: This is a flexible, open-ended option to create or adjust any part of the curriculum according to specific needs or unique scenarios that might not be covered in the existing tiles.
After making adjustments, can I still access the original lesson?
After you adjust a lesson using one of the tiles, click Compare to original to see a side-by-side comparison of the original lesson from Illustrative Mathematics and the version you’ve adjusted. You can also click Reset to original to return to the original curriculum.
3. Using the lessons with your students
How do I make copies of the materials created in Math Tailor?
You have two options:
Selecting the Print button after you’ve adjusted materials allows you to provide physical copies to your students.
Copy and paste the materials you create to your preferred document editor for your Learning Management System (LMS).
4. Creating student materials with Generative Artificial Intelligence (gen AI)
How does Math Tailor leverage gen AI?
Math Tailor leverages insights from pedagogical experts to train our prompts on a vast array of educational best practices. By incorporating expert knowledge about effective teaching strategies, the tool ensures that the AI-generated materials closely align with what a teacher might create.
Math Tailor uses a tool called OpenAI to generate the student materials you’ll see. For more information, please submit a ticket.
What are the best practices for prompting gen AI in Math Tailor?
Never enter personal information and always review the student materials that are created for accuracy and appropriateness.
5. Requesting account deletion
If educators want to delete their accounts, all associated student content will also be deleted, and their school leader on Render will be notified. Please reach out to Support by submitting a ticket with your request.
If a school leader wants to delete an educator account, they can reach us by submitting a ticket. We will notify the educator(s) and the account(s) will be removed.
Account deletion is permanent and cannot be undone. To help educators and schools manage educational records, we will retain educator data for up to 30 days after a deletion request has been verified. At the end of that time period, we will delete educator data. Note that we may retain data beyond these windows and may pause content deletion if specific content has been reported for violating Render or school policies. For more information, please see our Data Privacy Addendum and Privacy Policy.
6. Additional resources
Glossary
Illustrative Mathematics (IM): A nonprofit organization that offers a K–12 math curriculum based on the idea that all students can learn grade-level math.
AI tool tile: A feature within the selected lesson that enables you to easily add customizations to support your students’ learning needs.