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Concrete materials help students understand math in a tangible way. Imagine I met someone who had never had an apple before. If I told them, “I had an apple for lunch,” they might be able to deduce that an apple is food because I ate it for lunch, but that

As the year winds down, it’s a perfect time to set yourself up for success in the year ahead. I have prepared a list of reflection questions to help you think about which practices you want to maintain in the upcoming year and where you might have room for more

This is a question I get often, especially from 4th and 5th-grade teachers: “How do I support Tier 1 in math intervention? The kids are so far behind that what they are doing in the classroom doesn’t make any sense to them.” It’s a fair question, and it usually comes

Last week we talked about how to develop a plan for math intervention. Before that, I shared a broader look at how data fits into math intervention. There are a few different types of data we’re collecting, and each one serves a different purpose. We have screening data that helps

Last week we talked about how to determine where the breakdown is happening in your students’ math work. We have a skill we want to target, and now the work shifts to figuring out what to actually do in order to teach that skill. The first thing I’m thinking about

When a student is struggling, it’s really easy to feel like they need everything. Like we need to go all the way back, reteach it all, give more practice, just keep throwing things at the deficit until something sticks. When I notice a student struggling, I’m not immediately thinking about

Over the past several weeks we have explored different families of visual models and how they develop across grade levels. We have looked at models of the count sequence, part–whole models, discrete models, and area models. Each of these representations supports understanding math in a different way. The question that

In the early grades, students often experience multiplication through equal groups or arrays. They might build groups with counters, draw rows of dots, or skip count their way through a problem. These experiences help students understand what multiplication represents and means. As the numbers grow larger and the calculations become

Over the past few weeks, we have been exploring different types of visual models and how they support student thinking across grade levels. After talking about the importance of visual models overall, we looked at models of the count sequence such as number paths and number lines. Then we looked

In early grade levels, it can feel easy to skip number bonds. They are not the end goal! Your students can use hands-on materials or even just their fingers to add and subtract. So why do you need the number bond? The answer lies in number sense relationships. The purpose