Top

The Teacher Studio

Learning, thinking, creating

When Problem Solving, Precision, and Computation Meet: 5 Ideas to Ponder

I think it would be hard to find someone who would argue with the following statement: All students need to learn how  to compute efficiently and precisely. I mean--I sure can't argue with it!  I think the discussion comes in when we talk about how we expect our students to get there. Take these practice pages for example.  I use them.  In fact, they are part of two ... Read the Post

Math Talk, Open Ended Problems–and Thinking Backwards!

As you know if you have followed me for any length of time, I love to have my students work collaboratively on "challenging" tasks...and because it is testing season in my room, I like to give my students as much interaction with each other in our non-testing hours as possible! You may have seen (or even tried) some of my "Thinker Task" challenges...so they involved a real-life scenario where ... Read the Post

Elapsed Time,Solving Problems, and Addressing Misconceptions

As we move into the upper grades, we sometimes make some assumptions about some of those "basic skills" such as time, money, and basic computation.  It is super important that we consistently put students in positions to apply these skills in new, more complex ways so we can keep our eye out for deficit areas and misconceptions. So...I wanted to bring out some money and time problems to ... Read the Post

Perseverance, math collaboration, and the standards for mathematical practice…

After a few weeks off from school, I noticed that we were missing a little "spark" in math class...students seemed flat...a little "out of practice" with all our work of collaborating and talking about math.  I decided it was time to break out some challenge problems and to remember this phrase off our growth mindset bulletin board... I think in our time off, some of us forgot how powerful ... Read the Post

Open Ended Problem Solving

As you know, I am a huge believer in incorporating problem solving into math class whenever possible.  Over the years, it is has become more and more clear that students are on a quest to "get the right answer".  They don't value the problem solving process as much as what gets written on the line at the end--and I started my quest to change that thinking. I want my students to enjoy ... Read the Post

Teaching Cooperative Problem Solving

As we have been building more and routines into our days, I have been working on starting to improve the QUALITY of our partnering and small group work.  It has been interesting to watch, for sure--which students take charge...which ones sit back...which ones are off task...which ones don't know how to get started...and which ones rush through their work.  Now that I have a better ... Read the Post