When students solve word problems, there can be a lot of challenges. Maybe students struggle with all the language there is to process in the actual reading of the word problem. Maybe students aren't sure what operation to use when solving the problem. Maybe students don't know where to start when solving a multi-step problem. Word problems are just plain challenging. They require students to combine several skills and apply their understanding. One way we can do that is

(This post does contain affiliate links.) I always enjoy a great picture book, but when it connects math concepts, I'm especially...

Why do some students struggle in geometry? Help students master angles with free vocabulary and student angle practice.

Students begin learning about shapes in Kindergarten. They learn how to notice their differences in size, color and shape. They assign names to figures and learn that things can be called squares or triangles. As students extend their mathematical understanding, they learn that these shapes can have different names based on their attributes. Triangles can be named by the length of their sides or the types of angles they have. They could even be called two different names

Use flow charts to help students work through multi-step concepts in math.

A few months back, some members asked me to include some math literature connections. You may want to check out The Doorbell Rang , The Greedy Triangle or The Grapes of Math for other great examples of using literature to discover math concepts. Now that it's freezing outside, we love to sit down with a good book and see how it connects to our math understanding. And I just found a whole slew of math literature books I had hidden away in the closet! (Score!) So, stay t

Many of you know I love fall. I finally live somewhere that actually has fall with beautiful trees and amazing weather. I find myself wanting to attend everything related to pumpkins, apples or leaves and finding any and all activities that include those as well. While I love centers, one of the concepts I think that can be hard to implement is graphing. Whether making picture graphs, bar graphs or line plots, collecting real data is key to making these meaningful. Thankf

Covid has certainly created a lot of learning challenges. Whether students have missed instruction due to illnesses, had interrupted instruction due to school closings/delays, or just lost instruction from the stress of everything. It has definitely been a year! One of the things I have loved about some of the textbooks I've used is when the textbook begins each lesson with some form of review. This type of review is designed to activate prior knowledge to help students co

Recently, I read an article from NCTM about students using tessellation pictures to describe a quantity, and I loved that idea! (You can check it out in Mathematics Teacher: Learning and Teaching July 2021: Using TileFarm to Support Emerging Multiplication by Matt B. Roscoe.) Tessellations are pictures with repeated shape patterns. Many students create these using attribute blocks or make art with them by repeating the same shape with rotations, reflections, and translatio

I love the Olympics! I enjoy watching the best athletes in the world compete and seeing the different events. As I became a teacher, I learned that so much of the data collected from the Olympic events can be used for some valuable instruction. This week, I'm sharing some of my favorite ways to use Olympic data with a FREEBIE template that can be downloaded to begin sharing these amazing events with your students. First of all, if you haven't checked out the Olympics webs