Designed for use in 6th or 7th grade classrooms, the Transition Curriculum helps students make the shift in their conceptual thinking from arithmetic to algebra.
    
The Algebra Project is a vehicle for implementing the standards of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics such as Mathematics as Problem Solving; Mathematics as Communication; and Mathematics as Reasoning.
    
The Algebra Project Transition Curriculum engages students in the construction of mathematical concepts. The curriculum helps students build their understanding of mathematical concepts through a Five-Step curricular process that begins with familiar concrete experiences and progresses to abstract mathematics:

1. Participate in a physical event
2. Make pictorial (graphic) representations or models of the event
3. Discuss and write about the event in intuitive language(s)
4. Discuss and write about the event in structured language (identify key features)
5. Develop symbolic representations for the key features of the event, make presentations to the class and apply these representations.

The Algebra Project Transition curriculum consists of five units which relate to some of the big ideas in algebra such as equivalence, substitution, comparison, addition and subtraction of integers.