DreamBox Math for Texas
Reviewer Guide
DreamBox Math Accelerates Learning in Texas Classrooms
Fully aligned to the K-5 TEKS Readiness standards, DreamBox Math is a personalized, adaptive program that helps students progress toward proficiency in mathematics. DreamBox Math provides support for teachers and students on the most important mathematical concepts – developing understanding and procedural fluency including big ideas such as place value or fractions, decimals and percents that are critical for algebra readiness.
Address 100% TEKS Readiness Standards
Personalize Learning to Develop Fluency
Monitor Progress & Target Instruction
Strengthen School to Home Connections
Available in English and Spanish, DreamBox Math complements core instruction and aligns to programs such as Bluebonnet Learning Mathematics.
The program also can help educators prepare students for proficiency, as measured on STAAR assessments.
Get an
Overview
In this short video, get an overview and walkthrough of DreamBox Math for K-5 students.
Getting Started
Instructions
Explore the Quick Start Guide to get instructions for reviewing all aspects of the DreamBox curriculum.
Login Instructions and Credentials
Student Experience
To explore the Student Experience, go to: https://play.dreambox.com/login/wy74/bju3
Note: A brief introduction video appears at the first log in only. Subsequent logins pick up at the dashboard
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To review individual lessons, use this Correlation Guide.
Educator Dashboard
To explore the Educator Dashboard Experience, go to: https://play.reporting.demo.dreambox.com/
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To explore the Parent Dashboard Experience, go to: https://play.dreambox.com/login/wy74/bju3
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The DreamBox Difference
The DreamBox Difference for Texas Classrooms
DreamBox Math is a student-driven personalized supplemental program that complements core instruction and helps students build a strong foundation in the concepts most critical for proficiency and procedural fluency. With intelligently adaptive, engaging, and scaffolded lessons that adjust in real time, DreamBox differentiates learning to meet students where they are, building confidence and skills at their own pace. Continuous formative assessment powers the adaptive engine to tailor the learning pathway, the individualized lessons and provides immediate insights into student thinking around key mathematical concepts, empowering educators with the data they need to monitor progress and deliver targeted instruction.
100% Aligned to the TEKS Readiness Standards for Grades K-5
DreamBox Math fully aligns to the TEKS Readiness standards for K-5, ensuring that all lessons address the learning objectives. Data within DreamBox make it easy to measure progress toward proficiency on the TEKS.
District Standards Proficiency Report for TEKS
Evidence of Learning Through Transference
The DreamBox curriculum helps educators prepare students for proficiency, as measured by STAAR assessments. Interactive response features and task item types are similar to those found on STAAR tests. DreamBox continually assesses what students are doing in each task as they explore concepts, find structures and relationships along their pathway to procedural fluency. They will be equipped to demonstrate learning by fluently applying what they’ve learned in DreamBox, transferring that knowledge to a similar but unfamiliar situation in their summative assessments.
What Matters is What Works
DreamBox Math has been validated by multiple third-party studies and is rated STRONG by Evidence for ESSA.
Supporting Texas Classrooms
- 100% aligned to the TEKS Readiness Standards in grades K-5
- Lessons support STAAR assessment item types
- Develops conceptual understanding, strategic thinking, and fluency
- Age-appropriate experience & content motivates student learning
- Scaffolded instruction with audio and captioning
- Real-time actionable data & reporting supports progress monitoring
- Data-driven assignments and teacher supports ensure targeted instruction
- Aligns to and supports core curriculum, including Bluebonnet Learning Mathematics for K-5
- Meets accessibility requirements of WCAG 2.1 level AA standards
- Multilingual supports for emergent bilinguals
- Printable teaching and learning materials
- Parent dashboard and home-school connections
How It Works
How DreamBox Works
DreamBox Math provides a personalized learning experience that adapts in real-time to each student’s needs, helping to build critical mathematical skills through engaging, interactive lessons. Fitting easily into weekly instruction, DreamBox Math scales effective teacher practice to address the TEKS – including the ability to create TEKS or core curriculum-aligned assignments, monitor student progress, build strong home-school connections, and better support all students with embedded tools and instructional resources.
Key Program Components
The DreamBox Math Experience
DreamBox Math provides intentional experiences to support students, teachers, administrators, and parents. See how the curriculum works to support weekly teaching and learning, whether in the classroom or at home.
Personalized Learning Daily
Establish your place
Choose your path
Explore, model, discover solutions
Collect rewards, Unlock Achievements
Practice and play
Enhance Your Curriculum
Explore Scope of Curriculum by TEKS
See weekly engagement
Explore Scope of Curriculum by TEKS
Assign short-term Curriculum-aligned Lessons
Assign short-term Curriculum-aligned Lessons
Target Instruction
Assign short-term aligned to TEKS
Assign long-term Lesson aligned to TEKS
Monitor progress in DBM against TEKS
Track proficiency by assignment
Offer direct instruction
Monitor Progress Weekly
Check student work in real-time
Monitor daily Growth in DreamBox
Placement/ Initial Standing
Monitor Proficiency against the TEKS
Monitor progress for small groups
View School Engagement Monthly
Check student work in real-time
Monitor daily Growth in DreamBox
Placement/ Initial Standing
Monitor Proficiency against the TEKS
Monitor progress for small groups
Connect to Students and their Families
Introduce Students to DreamBox
Support At-Home Family Use
Message with Students
Monitor Progress together from home
Support Emerging Bilingual Learners
Intelligently Adaptive, Powered by Student Thinking
DreamBox Math immerses students in active exploration of mathematical concepts with transformative digital tools that drive adaptivity and personalization. With contextualized and scaffolded problem-solving tasks in responsive environments, personalized lessons meet every student where they are and make serious learning seriously fun.
Instructional Design
Rigorous and Relevant Instructional Design Aligned to TEKS
DreamBox Math is grounded in research-based progressions that are both concept- and skill-based, designed to match the way students actually think and learn. Rather than progressing through isolated memorization of facts, students are supported in building cognitive maps of connected ideas, allowing for deeper understanding and retention [Shepard, 1989]. The curriculum is intentionally designed with vertical and horizontal coherence, and is adaptive, reflecting the dynamic nature of student thinking.
Depth and Coherence of Key Concepts
Learning progressions are developed along vertical (across grade levels) and horizontal (within a grade level) axes, promoting connections across domains and supporting increasing complexity as students move toward algebra readiness [Treffers, 1987; Fosnot & Jacob, 2010].
DreamBox ensures coherence across and within grade levels. Lessons are intentionally sequenced to reinforce core concepts, build on prior knowledge, and prepare students for what comes next, ensuring readiness for more advanced mathematical thinking.
Developing Conceptual and Procedural Fluency
The purpose of learning mathematics is not just to get the right answer, but to make sense of the world and solve problems. DreamBox supports both the “how” and the “why” of mathematics. Lessons expose students to a wide range of intentional strategies for problem solving, ensuring that they have many tools in their toolkit.
Reinforcing Skills with Personalized Support
DreamBox responds to students’ individual needs through personalized tasks, offering targeted feedback and point-of-use tools. For students who need additional support, prerequisite skills are reintroduced, to help fill gaps while accelerating their learning pathway. This dynamic approach ensures every student progresses confidently and meaningfully.
Developing Academic Mathematical Language
Lesson Design
Lessons That Meet Students Where They Are
DreamBox lessons are intentionally designed to meet each student at their current level of understanding. Using adaptive technology, DreamBox personalizes the lesson sequence and supports based on real-time data gathered from student actions. Importantly, DreamBox doesn’t replace quality instruction with just “pause and rewind.” It responds to student thinking in the moment—adjusting the complexity, representation, and scaffolding based on the learner’s needs.
Research-Based Lesson Types
Each lesson in DreamBox aligns with one of three lesson types:
- Exploring & Sense Making – Students engage with manipulatives and real-world examples to uncover new concepts.
- Looking for Structure & Relationships – Students identify patterns and connections, building multiple strategies and deepening understanding.
- Fluency, Application & Procedural Skills – Students apply skills in novel problems, using efficient strategies and symbolic representation.
These lesson types ensure that learning is comprehensive, rigorous, and coherent, supporting sense-making, transfer, and mastery.
Mathematical Process Standards
Every DreamBox lesson is aligned to TEKS Readiness Standards for grades K-5, ensuring students not only learn math content but also develop problem-solving, reasoning, and communication skills.
The interactive Curriculum Guide for educators showcases how lessons progress from early sense making to fluency and application, supporting educators with both structure and flexibility. Furthermore, teachers can access Teacher Narratives, made just for Texas educators, that provide lesson plans with guidance on how to teach each breakout corresponding to one of the Texas K – 5 readiness standards.
Student Experience
Seriously Fun and Engaging Mathematics
Age-Appropriate Learning Environments, Personalized for Texas Students
Students personalize their own avatars and space with backgrounds and music in grades 3-5 as they earn badges and coins for engagement and stars as they gain proficiency by mathematical domain.
Gamification to Activate Engagement and Provide More Practice
As students’ complete lessons, they unlock fluency-building mini-games at every level, while also injecting an element of surprise into the learning journey. Students delight in the ability to change the voices of their audio support, with the
choice of 4 voices, which they can switch at any time.
Relevant Learning with Meaningful Context
Students learn by doing math in DreamBox—building confident, capable problem solvers equipped with the tools they need to succeed in the world outside the classroom.
With lessons that tap curiosity and exploration to develop conceptual understanding, strategic thinking, and math fluency, they will develop higher-order reasoning skills that are foundational for algebra and careers in STEM.
Game-based challenges and real-world applications allow students to show a deeper understanding of the math, moving beyond early sense-making and showing true fluency and application.
Symbolic Representation: Students solve problems using equations, expressions and number sentences to show their understanding in formal mathematical notation.
Visual models and virtual manipulatives, like number lines, area models, and arrays enable students visualize and interact with math relationships dynamically.
Using interactive tools, students engage in flexible thinking and use multiple strategies to solve a problem rather than following a single method.
Just-in-time support in DreamBox promotes error analysis and self-correction and facilitate productive struggle.
Hints and real-time scaffolding provide students with an opportunity to pause, think, and react to feedback, then progress in the lesson.
Supports for All Learners
Supporting All Learners
Automatic Differentiation and Just-in-time Scaffolds
DreamBox delivers deeply personalized lessons and targeted scaffolding that adjust in real time for automatic differentiation, to support students as they progress through math concepts, providing just the right amount of challenge and support to achieve productive struggle and get the greatest impact on learning. The result? more confidence, and steady progress for every learner and time saved for every teacher.
DreamBox provides embedded supports for students:
- Supporting students through their lesson progression and experience: DreamBox’s scope and sequence builds on prior knowledge, ensuring deep understanding before progressing to more complex topics.
- Deploying virtual manipulatives and visual models with intention: DreamBox provides interactive tools, like number lines, area models, and base-ten blocks, to help students visualize abstract concepts, explore different strategies, and build problem-solving skills.
- Guided tutorials articulate how models relate to algorithms and numeric representations, which reinforces understanding and aligns seamlessly with TEKS objectives.
- Providing tailored support: Scaffolded prompts encourage students to think critically and discover solutions on their own. DreamBox provides immediate targeted feedback, along with hints and alternative approaches, based on the student’s previous answer.
- Continuously assessing students’ understanding and adjusting in real time: DreamBox adapts based on how students answer questions, the strategies they use and the time they take to respond. This means each student receives a unique lesson experience.
- Optional point-of-use supports such as embedded hints, help, and replayable instructions, as well as the option to turn on audio and captions, enable students to further personalize their learning experience.
Supporting educators in providing timely feedback
Educators can easily track weekly progress from the Home Page, with access to real-time data, reports, teaching resources, and tools to support teaching and learning.
- Set weekly goals for implementation and engagement.
- Read messages from individual students.
- Send messages to the whole class.
- Add assignments of personalized lessons by topic, TEKS, or core math curriculum.
- Set the standards view progress towards proficiency in DreamBox against the TEKS.
- [Scroll down to] View Alerts & Achievements and identify students that may be struggling (May Need Attention).
- Replay Lesson Highlights to see evidence of a student’s understanding.
- Select a student to view Lesson Recommendations
Teachers can select a student to get deeper insight into what that student is ready to learn and what the student understands.
Lesson Recommendations show the teacher which lessons students are ready to learn and are in students’ Lesson Chooser, which TEKS they are aligned to, and which other students in the class are working on similar lessons. This helps inform strategic grouping.
Teachers can then view Lesson Highlights to replay a student’s lesson to see what a student understands,
how the student responded to each question, and how DreamBox adapted to the student.
Supporting Multi-Tiered Intervention Methods
DreamBox seamlessly integrates intervention, enrichment, and extension methods, aligning with Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) and Response to Intervention (RTI) while fostering enrichment, to ensure each student can grow at the right pace.
Through adaptive technology DreamBox provides students with a personalized learning pathway and differentiated lessons. Teachers can also assign personalized lessons for flexible control to support a diverse range of learners and connect to their curriculum goals.
Tiered Intervention:
Tier 1: DreamBox provides adaptive learning, real-time formative assessments, and diverse visual representations to support all students. Gamified learning environments, student choice, and stats motivate independence in learning. Teachers can assign content aligned to core instruction.
Tier 2: Individualized learning pathways provide targeted support with additional practice to help fill gaps; while scaffolding and feedback provide step-by-step guidance and strategy-based hints. Teacher-assigned lessons aligned to TEKS, NWEA RIT scores, and core print programs allow customization based on assessment data and enable progress monitoring of proficiency in the TEKS and growth in DreamBox daily.
Tier 3: Through repeated exposure and mastery-based progression, students with significant gaps benefit from structured practice with multiple opportunities to succeed, while virtual manipulatives and concrete models simplify abstract concepts. Long-term assignments enable teachers to monitor progress against specific TEKS over 2-10 weeks.
Enrichment and Extension
Support for Emergent Bilingual Learners
Students can access instructions repeatedly and work at their own pace in a safe, low-risk environment. Visual models and manipulatives help make abstract concepts concrete, supporting conceptual understanding while developing academic language.
Accessibility
Instructional Assessments
Instructional Assessments in DreamBox Math
At DreamBox, we believe every student has the potential to thrive in mathematics with the right tools and support. Our philosophy is rooted in the idea that learning should be student-driven and continuously responsive.
Initial Placement in DreamBox
Launchpad is DreamBox’s placement experience, designed to quickly and accurately determine students’ starting point on their personalized learning pathway through the curriculum. Districts also have other options besides Launchpad to inform placement within the curriculum, including by grade level or RIT score.
Aligned with TEKS and including interactive item types of varying complexity levels, Launchpad uses the same virtual manipulatives and engaging experience as the rest of DreamBox—and students don’t even know they’re being assessed!
Continuous Embedded Formative Assessment in DreamBox
DreamBox Math is a student-driven personalized supplemental program that complements core instruction and helps students build a strong foundation in the concepts most critical for proficiency and procedural fluency. With intelligently adaptive, engaging, and scaffolded lessons that adjust in real time, DreamBox differentiates learning to meet students where they are, building confidence and skills at their own pace. Continuous formative assessment powers the adaptive engine to tailor the learning pathway, the individualized lessons and provides immediate insights into student thinking around key mathematical concepts, empowering educators with the data they need to monitor progress and deliver targeted instruction.
As the student plays, DreamBox is learning the learner, gathering data on how the student interacts with manipulatives and problems, and calibrating to their strengths and struggles with every click:
- Through interactive item types of varying complexity levels, DreamBox collects data points from each student’s interactions to evaluate the strategies used to solve problems.
- Just-in-time scaffolding immediately adjusts the levels of difficulty, scaffolding, and pacing of the curriculum.
- The more data DreamBox gathers the more personalized the learning becomes, adjusting in real time to find and engage the student in their optimal learning zone.
DreamBox Difference: Authentic Evidence of Learning
DreamBox assessment is based on students’ demonstrated understanding, not just correct answers. Each lesson contains measurable learning objectives aligned to TEKS where student evidence is showcased in not only what they answer, but what they do and how they show their thinking. To be marked proficient, students must consistently show mastery across multiple lesson types—including early sense-making and exploration, looking for structure and relationships, and procedural fluency.
Assessing Progress in DreamBox
Each district is empowered to make a decision that will personalize DreamBox just for them. They have the choice to utilize their own assessment data for placing students. If they want students to have access to grade-level standards, they could choose to place students at the rostered grade level. Lastly, a district can choose to utilize Launchpad, DreamBox’s initial placement test.
From there, progress is continuously monitored through embedded formative assessment, ensuring that the recommendations that are made for each student are based on the latest and greatest information, instead of a one-time assessment from months ago. The Growth Report and Standards Proficiency Report give teachers a clear view of where each student stands in relation to grade-level expectations.
Digital Administrator Dashboard
STAAR-Aligned Assessment Features
DreamBox helps students prepare for STAAR through regular exposure to learning tasks that mirror the objectives measured. This ensures students gain fluency not just with content, but with the format and skills needed for success on state assessments.
Data and Progress Monitoring
Monitor Progress by TEKS
Texas educators view student proficiency and trends across the district by grade level, school, and domain with the Growth in DreamBox report, and individual TEKS using DreamBox’s Standards Proficiency and classroom Standards reports.
With classroom Standards reports, educators can:
- Monitor progress on the Readiness TEKS.
- Identify areas of need for intentional individual or group instruction.
- Create short-term assignments that support classroom instruction.
- Add long-term assignments to accelerate proficiency or extend learning.
Connect DreamBox Math Instruction with Classroom Curriculum
With the ability to align to states’ standards and Texas core curriculum programs, including Bluebonnet Learning, teachers have flexibility to meet students where they are with personalization while also connecting DreamBox more directly to their classroom instruction.
DreamBox Educators can:
Lead whole- or small-group lessons with DreamBox by selecting a specific TEKS from the interactive Curriculum Guide.
Add Assignments for all or some students that align with Bluebonnet, TEKS, or other core curriculum.
See which students have similar Lesson Recommendations in their Lesson Choosers, and target achievement goals for that small group.
Replay Lesson Highlights for a student and reflect on specific strategies, understandings, and misconceptions in 1:1 conferences.
Implementing in the Classroom
Implementing DreamBox Math in the Classroom
DreamBox Math is a web-based math program powered by students, built by and for educators and proven to positively impact student achievement. DreamBox only requires a computer (laptop, desktop, and/or Chromebook) or an iPad to gain access, and both teacher and student pathways are clear, easy to get started, and straightforward for ongoing usage. See detailed system requirements here.
DreamBox Math Fits into Weekly Instruction
DreamBox research suggests students complete three to five lessons each week to optimize progress toward TEKS proficiency, roughly one hour of DreamBox play per week to accommodate this target. DreamBox’s progress monitoring features may indicate different usage requirements for different students, so we encourage educators to adjust implementation expectations as needed with individuals.
Teachers can log-in to their dashboard weekly to review data, monitor progress, and create targeted assignments for targeted and differentiated instruction.
Implementation Models
- Individual Student Learning
- Small-Group Instruction
- Station Rotation
- At-Home Practice
- Targeted Assignments for Individuals, Groups, or Whole Class
Supports for Teachers to Plan Lessons and Deliver Targeted Instruction
DreamBox Math includes a library of lesson guides purpose-built just for Texas educators, specific to each breakout corresponding to one of the Texas K-5 Readiness Standards within the TEKS. The Teacher Narratives provide educators with recommendations on how to teach each breakout and are intended to supplement educators’ existing core instructional materials and curriculum. Teacher Narratives include advice on how to support emergent bilingual students and links to suggested DreamBox Math lessons that they can use to supplement their instruction.
From the interactive Curriculum Guide teachers can connect DreamBox to every aspect of their classroom instruction. They can search and filter lessons by the TEKS, play lessons to get familiar with the lesson progression, and identify lessons that will enhance tiered instruction:
- Tier 1: Preview lessons with students to introduce, reinforce, or review a concept from the core curriculum.
- Tier 2: Create a custom group of students and add a long-term assignment to track their proficiency against specific TEK
- Tier 3: Select from a range of supplemental lessons for offline direct instruction to support targeted interventions.
Find online math tools for teachers to use with an interactive white board or projector to make math lessons clear for your whole class. Each lesson includes tutorials on how to use the manipulatives and ideas for incorporating the tools into classroom lessons.
Educator Implementation Supports
Texas Educator Implementation Resources and Support for Success
Discovery Education provides a dedicated partner success manager to help districts as they set and track goals and ensure they are connected to the resources they need for successful implementation.
Professional Learning
DreamBox Professional Learning empowers Texas educators to boost instructional efficacy in their classrooms through continuous learning across all key areas critical to math teaching and learning success.
- Learning Your Way: Offerings flexibly meet each educator’s availability and needs.
- Teachers can engage in live, interactive sessions or participate in self-paced, on-demand eLearning.
- Partners in Growth: Former educators with deep knowledge of K-8 mathematics power the DreamBox professional learning team.
- On-Demand eLearning: DreamBox University’s library of learner-centric content provides a wealth of easy-to-use, digital resources when educators need them to enhance best practices and strengthen math instruction.
DreamBox University
With hours of structured content to explore, educators have access to self-paced eLearning modules, helpful printables, and quick-tip videos. It’s relevant, personalized, and available 24/7 from the Educator Dashboard.
At Home Use
Bridging the Home–Classroom Connection
Track Progress & Set Goals with the Family Insights Dashboard
Teachers can share the student-level Growth in DreamBox Report with students so they can progress monitor together with their parents.
The Family Insights Dashboard provides parents with a window into their child’s progress to better support learning outcomes. Built-in goal-setting tools for students and families and communication through milestone emails make easy to motivate engagement, track progress on skill development, and celebrate successes as a family. Students can access teacher-created assignments or play in DreamBox for their just-right lessons while at home.
Resources to Support At-Home Usage
DreamBox Math provides a variety of resources in English and Spanish that teachers can share with parents and families to support at-home usage. Easily downloadable directly from the Resources page in the educator dashboard or from the Implementation Toolkit, provide introductory materials about DreamBox Math, instructions for student log-in using their school account, instructions for setting up the Math Family Dashboard linked to the student, and more.
