• The programs One, Two and Three and Plus One were written by the mathematics team of the Centre for Educational Technology (CET), and the mathematics team of the Israeli Curriculum Center in the Ministry of Education (ICC).
     
  • The current edition is based on lessons learned from the implementation of the experimental edition of both programs, over a period of 15 years, and from experimentation with the revised materials for a period of several years.
    The current edition is also based on the development of research in the field of mathematics education.
     
  • The programs One, Two and Three and Plus One have become synonymous with mathematics instruction in elementary schools in Israel. The materials are developed in both Hebrew and Arabic languages, to accommodate for the two main populations in Israel.
     
  • These programs cover all the required instructional material for 1st to 6th grades according to the national curriculum of the Ministry of Education (1988).
     
  • Both programs include instructional materials suitable for most students, and additional materials:
    Bridges (Gesharim) - workbooks for readiness and supplement
    Discoveries (Giluyim) - workbooks for enrichment and deepening.
     
  • The programs One, Two and Three and Plus One contain the same chapters and take the same approach. The difference between them is that the program Plus One is more suitable for differential work with students because it contains more exercises, more enriching activities, and self-tests.
    The program One, two and Three contains three workbooks for each school year, while in the program Plus One, each workbook usually contains one chapter only, so the teacher can easily change the order of the sequence of chapters.
     
The rationale behind the programs
In mathematics instruction in elementary school, one has to present an abstract system of concepts, to students whose thinking is not yet mature for abstraction, and to provide them with mathematical language, which is unfamiliar to them. One of the ways to cope with these tasks, is to find a concrete exemplification world, which can be used as a model for the mathematical world, and within which the student can operate easily and as a result, understand the mathematical concepts and the language describing them.
 
According to the conception represented in the programs One, Two and Three and Plus One, there are three phases in the teaching and learning process of a mathematical topic:
  • First stage - The student operates in a familiar concrete system (the model), and in a familiar language (the model language), in order to learn new concepts and relations that exist in mathematics and are exemplified by the model.
  • Second Stage - The student performs activities with the model, by which he learns the mathematical language describing the relations among the objects of the model.
  • Third Stage - The student works with the mathematical language and with mathematical applications, without dealing with the objects of the model.

More about the rationale

List of Present and Past Developers: Cet and Icc