When you have students that struggle, they spend an awful lot of time feeling frustrated with the lessons and other activities we do. They often "check out"--and the cycle continues. What can we do to help with building math confidence? One thing I have started to do about this time of year is to go back to some of the activities earlier in the year that I know some of my less able students ... Read the Post
Fraction Concepts Day 2! Conceptions, Misconceptions, and Mathematical Language
Well, things got even more interesting as my work with fractions unfolded on day 2! For those of you who read my first fraction post, I discussed how we used paper folding to get our fraction concepts unit "launched", and we ran out of time to finish the investigation before digging into some fraction misconceptions. I gave them another 25 minutes today to work on folding their different ... Read the Post
Fraction Folding–discovery learning
Today we kicked off our fraction unit, and I think I am going to really try to do a lot of blogging about it over the next few weeks--because I will be immersed in it AND because it is such a critical component of the Common Core for intermediate grades. I think it is vital that we dialogue about ways to help students build their understanding of fractions, so I invite you to share along with me ... Read the Post
5 Tips for Helping Students Make Sense of Word Problems
How many of you have ever given your students a challenging problem and within SECONDS heard something like... "I don't get it." or "What are we supposed to do? This is the point where every teacher sighs and wonders where they went wrong as teachers--or where the students have been during the last months of teaching! I think part of the problem comes from the fact that we too ... Read the Post
Teaching Tips for Math Concept Sorts
Have you used concept sorts in your classroom? If you have followed my blog for a while, you know that I use concept sorts regularly--and have posted a number of times about different ways I use them. Click HERE and HERE for two of those posts! Using Geometry Math Sorts to Build Understanding Today I want to talk about a geometry sort I did the other day to "take the temperature" of my class ... Read the Post
Perseverance and “making sense” of problems
OK...today was a little fun in math. A lot, maybe. I stumped my students. Yep. All of them. I have a huge range of skill levels in my class--from SUBSTANTIALLY below grade level to top of the heap...and today, everyone was a bit stymied. I loved it! In my constant fear of my students becoming "box filler in-ers", I am always looking for ways to get my students to ... Read the Post
“Use Appropriate Tools Strategically” : A Standard for Mathematical Practice
I have had lots of requests for more math posts about every topic from organization to the Common Core to math workshop, so I have some things in the works! I am going to try to work on two series of blog posts--one on the Standards for Mathematical Practice because I feel that this is truly where teachers can make a HUGE impact with their students. We really must remember that the ... Read the Post
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