Want a fun, engaging, and mathematically powerful activity to help keep your students engaged in math until the holiday break?  In this episode I’m sharing a new activity by one of my favorite creators, Steve Wyborney, Leaping Numbers.  This activity is a great way to get your students doing Standard of Math Practice #7: Look For & Make Use of Structure.  To see this episode instead of just listen, go to https://www.youtube.com/BuildMathMinds  To get any links mentioned in the episode...

Math tricks or hacks are everywhere, but which ones should you actually use with your students?  I came across one this week on social media and thought I’d use it as an example to give you some ideas on how to approach the use of math tricks in your classroom.  To see this episode instead of just listen, go to https://www.youtube.com/BuildMathMinds  To get any links mentioned in the episode go to: https://buildmathminds.com/179  

This week’s episode comes from a question that was sent in about helping students who struggle with math problems that are written differently than kids typically see them.  These types of “less than” math problems are strange because kids don’t often encounter them in that way even in their own lives.  I’m giving you two tips to help students so that these types of problems aren’t so difficult for them.  To see this episode instead of just listen, go to...

Math Misconceptions might just look like mistakes that your students are making, but they are usually slightly different.  Mistakes happen when we don’t remember, or remember incorrectly, whereas Misconceptions are rooted in understanding…we believe this is the way it is.  Mistakes happen from time to time, and are usually not anything to get too worried about.  But Misconceptions stem from a person’s understanding of something and if it isn’t addressed it will forever be misunderstood.  In...

In this episode I’m introducing you to a not-yet-released book about the traps of math algorithms, but it’s actually so much more than that.  It’s about women supporting women and lifting someone up when you see they are doing good instead of trying to tear them down.  To see this episode instead of just listen, go to https://www.youtube.com/BuildMathMinds  To get any links mentioned in the episode go to: https://buildmathminds.com/176  

Rounding numbers should be way more than just a procedure where we ask students to look to see if the number behind is a 5 or higher.  Helping elementary students round should be based upon their number sense.  In this last episode of the Rounding Numbers series, I’m giving you an acronym to remember to help your students with rounding numbers: ABR.  To see this episode instead of just listen, go to https://www.youtube.com/BuildMathMinds    To get any links mentioned in the episode go to: ...

Rounding numbers should be way more than just a procedure where we ask students to look to see if the number behind is a 5 or higher.  Helping elementary students round should be based upon their number sense.  In this 2nd episode of the Rounding Numbers series, I’m giving my 2nd tip on how to help your students round with understanding.  To see this episode instead of just listen, go to https://www.youtube.com/BuildMathMinds    To get any links mentioned in the episode go to: ...

Rounding numbers should be way more than just a procedure where we ask students to look to see if the number behind is a 5 or higher.  Helping elementary students round should be based upon their number sense.  In this first episode of the Rounding Numbers series, I’m giving my first tip on how to help your students round with understanding.  To see this episode instead of just listen, go to https://www.youtube.com/BuildMathMinds  To get any links mentioned in the episode go to: ...

I think we’ve all heard and know about Emotional Eating, but have you ever felt like you’ve done Emotional TEACHING?  Not sure it’s a thing, but it kind of feels like it should be. Listen in to my random thoughts and then let me know in the comments over on the YouTube video or the show notes page if you’ve ever done Emotional Teaching? I give an example of Teaching Emotionally in math, but your example could be from any content area.

My kids and I play a lot.  Sports, card games, board games, but they all have a preset goal…to win.  According to a book I’m reading, true play does NOT have a preset goal.  So it got me wondering how much true play my kids, and I, actually do.  I’m making it a goal to include more opportunities for us to truly play.  In this episode I’m sharing my ideas on what I will be doing this summer to play (and getting my kids to join in) plus I give you the Seven Principles of Self-Active Play they...

If you’ve struggled with how to help your elementary students build their math fluency, there is one thing I encourage you to do: Help your students build their flexibility with numbers. Textbooks try to directly teach strategies to students thinking that is how they will build flexibility, but you spend months doing that and then later in the year they act like they have no idea what you are talking about.  That’s when we revert back to just making kids memorize.  In this episode we take a...

When I first started teaching I don’t think I ONCE used a math manipulative with my students.  It was all about learning and memorizing procedures and I didn’t know they needed to actually understand the math.   Now, I’m a Recovering Traditionalist and I know that kids need to understand the math, not just DO it, and to help them understand they need to work with math manipulatives.   In this episode, I’m sharing 3 key things to watch out for when working with math manipulatives.  We need to...

Growing up I thought doing Mental Math meant doing the algorithm in my head.  Times have changed and now many educators have kids solve math in different ways but during Mental Math it’s still only having kids to do math in their head.  That’s not exactly what Mental Math should be about.  In this episode we explore what doing Mental Math really should be like. Get any links mentioned in this video at BuildMathMinds.com/167 

If you’ve ever watched a child during a counting collection and thought “Ugh! Why are you grouping the items like that?!?”  Well, there’s probably a reason.  There is a progression kids go through when organizing items they are counting.  Now even though this information comes from a book about Early Childhood Education, it still applies to those of you in 3rd-5th as you work to help them group items in ways that lead to multiplicative thinking. Watch this week’s video about The Progression...

It is commonly thought that Geometry in the early grades is just about getting kids to name and identify shapes.  There are actually 4 big ideas talked about in the Navigating Through Geometry book.  One of which is the work around two- and three-dimensional shapes but it is so much more than just naming & identifying shapes.   In this episode we take a look at what knowledge kids in PreK-2 should be developing around shapes and the types of experiences you can provide to help them...

There are 4 main strategies children tend to use to solve addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems.  These math strategies are not tricks.  Their foundations are built on number relationships and properties of operations.  In the Math Strategy Sessions we have already explored 3 of the strategies and our next session is focused on helping kids use and understand the Inverse Operation Strategy (https://buildmathminds.com/strategy-sessions to register).  This is more than...

There are lots of Problems of Teaching when you are helping young kids learn mathematics.  One of the hardest ones is helping your students to be successful learners, constantly trying to manage a large classroom of students who often are not very productive. In the book Teaching Problems and the Problems of Teaching by Dr. Magdalene Lampert, there was a line in the chapter Teaching Students to Be People Who Study in School, that still has me thinking: “...if we view students’ productive or...

In this video I’m sharing a part of a book that made me go “Hmm, I’ve never really thought about that!”  It has to do with just how precise we can actually be when measuring items. One of the Standards of Mathematical Practice is “Attend to Precision” which is about being precise in all mathematical vocabulary and content, but just how precise should we make students be when it comes to measurement?  Get any links mentioned in this video at BuildMathMinds.com/162  

I love pies, Pecan Pie especially, but I don’t love them during math time.  Pies, well circles in general, are an overused visual when it comes to the teaching of fractions.  In this video we take a look at visual fraction models that are much better to use and will be helpful to your students as they progress into other mathematical concepts like percentages, ratios, etc.  Get any links mentioned in this video at BuildMathMinds.com/161 

After the 2024 Virtual Math Summit, there was so much mention of using Sentence Stems I wanted to dig a bit deeper into them.  In my research I stumbled upon an old blog post by one of my favorite Math-y people, Sara Van Der Werf.  In this podcast episode I’m sharing a piece of her blog post that talks about one tweak you can make to Think/Pair/Share (or Turn & Talk) to help get your students more engaged in the math discussion.  Take a listen and go to buildmathminds.com/160 for any...

Cathy Fosnot and Pam Harris are The Queens of Number Strings (or Problem Strings as Pam would call them).  I’m way too excited about the fact they are teaming up to do a one-day workshop all about using Problem Strings for Automaticity, Fluency, and Beyond.  If you’ve been doing number strings and want to go more in depth on how to use them in your classroom, I highly recommend going to this workshop.  Go to https://buildmathminds.com/159  to get links to items mentioned in the episode.  

Before the 2024 Virtual Math Summit starts next week, enjoy this preview of a Pre-Summit Session by Rosalba Serrano on Preventing Teacher Burnout.  Rosalba shares a ton of information and ideas to help you with burnout but I specifically picked this clip because one of the ideas she shared is one that my family uses a lot: Control the Controllables.   Get registered so you can watch Rosalba’s full session before the summit starts: VirtualMathSummit.com/register. 

The 2024 Virtual Math Summit is in two weeks!  Here’s a preview of 3 sessions from Jenny Foreman, Loren Thorpe, and myself talking about the challenges and benefits of working on getting your students to think and not just compute during math class.  To see the full list of speakers, their presentations, and to get registered go to VirtualMathSummit.com/register. To get any links mentioned in this episode, go to the show notes page at BuildMathMinds.com/157.