Amplify Desmos Math: Algebra 2 Educator Panel
'“I’m so excited to invite you to participate in the Amplify Desmos Math Geometry/Algebra 2 Educator Panel for the upcoming 2025-2026 school year! We appreciate your interest in this opportunity and think you’d be a great fit for the panel. This is an amazing opportunity to review our pilot programs as they are being written to inform the commercial release of Amplify Desmos Math Geometry and Algebra 2!”
This was the email I received last August of 2025 after I filled out an application to join Desmos’ new curriculum educator panel. The goal of this panel was to allow teachers to review the new Amplify Desmos Math Algebra 2/Geometry curriculum units and “provide feedback on scope, sequence, and structure of the content within each unit to inform updates to be made to the commercial product.” Beginning in August and ending in March, my task was to review one curriculum module per month by going through each Desmos activity, paper resource, differentiation opportunity, assessment, and practice task. I then filled out a feedback form that had me answer a variety of questions. The estimated time commitment was two to three hours per month, but because I liked to go through each unit carefully and write notes down on each activity and assessment as I went through them, I typically spent closer to five total hours per month on the module. There were definitely some months where I had to push myself to get the curriculum review done as I balanced everything else going on in my life. I think the most difficult ones were during the times when letters of recommendation or grades were due.
Creating curriculum, finding and designing resources, and lesson planning are some of my favorite parts of teaching, so I was very excited and honored to be a part of this panel and gain access to Amplify Desmos’ brand new Algebra II curriculum. Throughout last year, Amplify was creating the curriculum units, and there were times that I was reviewing and providing feedback on a unit that was hot off the press (but not yet available to the public).
My school does not use the Amplify Desmos curriculum, which requires a paid subscription based on the number of students using the curriculum, so this was a unique opportunity for me to play around with all the activities, both computer-based and paper, and get new ideas for introducing these topics to my own students. Each of the eight modules had about three sub-units, and each sub-unit had about four lessons, each consisting of a Desmos activity. I just loved the names of these activities as they often contained a pun or joke; whoever was writing all of those titles need a pay raise!
Although I did have some constructive criticism on a handful of the lessons, and although there was one unit that I did not particularly enjoy, for the most part I loved the new curriculum that Amplify created, and I appreciated that there were paper-based portions to allow for screen breaks. The modules contained some incredible visuals, manipulatives, and interactive features to really bring the concepts to life, and I especially liked the real-life modeling problem at the end of each module. These were multi-step, highly engaging, involved problems that pertained to real-world phenomena.
Part of what makes this curriculum work so well are the non-Algebra aspects of the design. These include an emphasis on building Math Language Development to help foster student communication and inclusion of consistent Instructional Routines (such as Critique, Correct, and Clarify). There are always ways to Differentiation a lesson to support and challenge students as needed, and the importance of building a positive Math Identity and Community is heavily emphasized.
The full Amplify Desmos Math Algebra II curriculum is being released this September 2026 with official Modeling Tasks being released this summer. The Algebra I curriculum was fully finished and released to schools last summer of 2025, and Geometry and Algebra II are almost ready to go live as well.
If you are an Algebra II teacher who is lucky enough to work at a school that purchased Amplify Desmos Math curriculum, I hope you enjoy using the new curriculum. For now, I will continue using my own collections of Desmos activities and creating new ones to support my students.