One of the hardest things to navigate when teaching math in a classroom is the huge range of skill levels of the students. I see this daily; in a grade 6 class there are some students who don’t know ‘friends of 10’ nor any strategies for adding and subtracting besides finger counting and stacking …
Building Basic Number Sense Part 1: Subitizing
Number Talks
Number Talks are a fantastic 5-15 minute daily practice that are useful for all ages. Here is a 30 minute vlog on how and why to use them to get you started. Number Talks are designed to improve fluency for kids (especially our intermediate and middle school kids who still aren’t fluent) AND they utilize …
Committing Assumicide
Full disclosure: I am just as guilty as anyone of making assumptions! I catch myself and hear it from my colleagues all the time: “my students won’t be able to do that”, “Johnny isn’t able to do this task because he’s way too low”, “this is the best way to teach this concept because it’s …
Back to School Part 2
Hi All! Happy first week – I know this week feels like a crazy whirlwind, especially compared to the relative calm of summer (for me anyway). Last post I wrote about setting up your scope and sequence as a first step to have a well-connected, logical flow of content and competencies. This post I’m …
Back to School Part 1
Hi All! I hope you’ve enjoyed your summer as much as I have! WOW, it was an eventful summer for me. I was in Europe for most of July….which was absolutely amazing. I only math geeked out a bit- see some math I found on a wall in Paris in the photo below. I …
