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Free Number Sense Boosters
Could your students’ number sense use a boost? These quick and simple activities improve number sense while engaging your students.
Latest from the Blog
How To Teach Rounding When It Feels Like a Struggle
If your grade level has standards around rounding numbers then you have thought long and hard about how to teach rounding to students who are struggling with math. There are two main schools of thought here. Teach the students HOW to round. This may include a rhyme, an anchor chart,
Differentiate Worksheets Without Breaking a Sweat
What if I told you that you could differentiate your math worksheets, for any grade level, without getting out your computer, your white-out, your pens or, even taking a trip to the copier? Would you believe me? What if I told you that, without any work at all, you could
How to Teach Rounding Decimal Numbers
A few years back I wrote the post “5 And Above, Give It a Shove… No, Really…” It’s been a few years but when I type “rounding” into Pinterest, 3 of the top 5 results still involve a search for an anchor chart. Anchor charts are great, but when your students
Low-Prep High Value Place Value Games
Place value comes up every year throughout elementary school. But what makes it so difficult for our students to understand and what can we do to make place value instruction more clear for our most struggling students. Quick and simple place value games can help your students to build understanding
Why Teaching Line Plots is Harder Than it Looks
Much of the “data and graphing” instruction comes quite easily to students. A bar graph or pictograph is really quite intuitive to read- the difficulty in instruction comes in when students are asked to solve comparison word problems based on the data in the charts. And we KNOW that comparison
The Math Spot Compares Fractions: Abstract Thinking
We’ve made it! We’re at the last post in the 4 part fraction comparison series. If you haven’t read parts 1, 2, and 3, go back and begin there. Up until this point we have focused on teaching fraction comparisons by allowing students to have experiences that would promote understanding
The Math Spot Compares Fractions: Representative Models
We are heading into post #3 of my four-part fraction comparison series. If you haven’t read post #1 and post #2 take a quick break to go and read those now! Now that we are all caught up, let’s do a quick recap of the big ideas: Students have had
The Math Spot Compares Fractions- Comparison Tools
When I taught 4th grade special ed. I found that fractions in the context of a story made so much sense to my students. I would come up with elaborate scenarios – most involving food- that would start out by granting one student exclusive rights to an entire pan of
Comparing Fractions with Understanding (Instead of Tricks)
Comparing fractions <groan> you know that your students will come in with all sorts of “tricks” and misconceptions up their sleeves. But, never fear, because if you can predict it, you can prevent it. Instead of promoting tricks, we can “Think CRA” and build a solid foundation for fraction comparison
YouTube Counting Song Roundup
YouTube is such an excellent resource when it comes to songs and videos. There is an absolute wealth of options on the site especially when it comes to number and counting songs. Sometimes there are almost too many options and crawling through can be very time consuming. Lucky for you