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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
Fact Fluency Through Subitizing
Last summer, along with a few other math bloggers, I did a book study on the book Teaching Student Centered Mathematics By John Van de Walle, LouAnn Lovin, Karen Karp, and Jennifer Bay-Williams. Chapter 8 revolved around developing number sense and outlined a series of important number relationships. One of
Independence in Math Class
“But they could do it at the side table 10 minutes ago… why can’t they do it now???” Sound familiar? You have a handful of students who you have been pulling aside for additional help in math. You are even stepping back and thinking C-R-A and in the small group setting
What is the CRA Math Model?
One of my favorite topics to teach is ten more and ten less with 1st graders. We start out by building a 2-digit number with base ten blocks and then add or subtract a ten stick to determine the number that is ten more or ten less. I mix in
Teaching Fact Fluency with a Rekenrek
If you are not using a Rekenrek in your classroom you NEED to go and purchase one or make one ASAP. It is such an excellent tool when it comes to building number sense and fact fluency with your students. Currently, my students are working on their understanding of the
Why Can’t You Teach My Kid To Add The Normal Way!?!
Multiple times each week I find a post on Facebook condemning the Common Core because it is unfair for teachers, our students are being turned into robots, and the math strategies are ridiculous, unrealistic, useless in the “real world”, ruining young minds, etc. I want to unravel what is at
Sing it Out!
In my building I work in an area called “The Primary Pod”. This means that we have two clusters of 4 classrooms with no walls between them. We have rolling cubbies between them, shelves, crates, but no walls. Can you imagine teaching without walls? It’s not easy to keep my
Attacking Angles
I recently had a conversation with a 4th grade colleague. She had been measuring and drawing angles using a protractor with her student. The trouble was that no matter how much guided practice she provided, how many real life examples, how ever many ways she tried to attack angles, there
Fly On The Math Teacher’s Wall: Fractions!
Thanks for joining in on the Fly on the Math Teacher’s Wall Blog Hop. This is definitely one of my favorite blog hops out there because it is CONTENT focused! Just a bunch of math nerds talking about instruction 🙂 If you look at the CCLS, fraction standards don’t start
Addition with Regrouping… The Place Value Way!
A few months ago, I wrote a post on using place value strategies to add two 2-digit numbers. If you remember, students were decomposing numbers into tens and ones and combining like units. By using base ten blocks, students were able to easily make the connection between the digits in
Keywords are NOT the Key to Word Problems
Solving word problems is hard. Word problem keywords seem like a logical solution but this strategy will make solving word problems even more difficult. Like really, really hard. In a world where reading comprehension, logical thinking, math computation, and visualization come together, word problems were born. As teachers, we
