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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
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
Why Are There So Many Different Strategies for Addition?
If you are on Facebook, surely, you have seen rants about how Common Core Math is the WORST. Seemingly elaborate diagrams are drawn to add simple numbers such as 19 + 6. Students are drawing number bonds to break apart the 6 into a 1 and a 5, are circling
4 Halloween Math Activities to Spice Up The Season!
The fall can be such a fun time in the classroom. Your students are excited about the changing season, the upcoming holiday, and all of the fun fall festivities they are experiencing outside of the classroom. Instead of trying to fight the excitement around Halloween, check out these fun Halloween
5 And Above, Give It A Shove… No Really….
“5 and above, give it a shove. 4 and below, let it go” “5 or more, raise the score, 4 or less, let it rest” … No, really, let this rhyme rest already. I propose that we let these poems go. While they might seem like a great trick
8 Simple Activities for Effective Place Value Differentiation
I originally published this blog post in 2014. Back then, the title was “Why 2nd Grade LOVES Base Ten Blocks”. I still think that base ten blocks are an amazing tool for 2nd-grade students. But my thinking has changed. If I were to rewrite that title now it would sound
