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The Teacher Studio

Learning, thinking, creating

Making Sense of Problems: Meaningful Math

Teaching math is a complicated venture--to say the least.  Between figuring out how to meet the needs of all our students, balance a jam-packed curriculum, worry about interventions and enrichment--and then throw in fire drills, strep throat epidemics, students gone on vacations, meetings...it's a wonder we get anything done!  Add in the fact that most math series are limited in the amount of--and ... Read the Post

Rethinking Problem Solving: More Than a Word Problem

For years I have used the phrase "problem solving does not equal word problems", but I love it when I have a real world "math experience" that helps prove this point.  Today was one of those days--so I thought I'd share! If you have followed me for any length of time, you may have seen me post about "Mind Boggling Math", a resource I created about three years ago to help provide me students ... Read the Post

Problem solving in the “real world”

One thing that I think is super important for students to understand is that math is REAL.  Math isn't "fill in the blanks" in your workbook...or a practice sheet...or even a math game.  Math is everywhere--and in everything.  Getting students to recognize this is key--and helping them see that math can help them make sense of their world and solve REAL problems should be a key part ... Read the Post

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!

Open Ended Math Challenges 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" open ended problems...so they ... 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