Posts by Date

 12/2/20/24 -  Connecting Multiple Representations with Mister Angle -  Do you actively connect student strategies and representations in your math class? Many teachers encourage students to solve problems any way they can, but they don't understand the power of connecting those strategies. The science of math shows that actively connecting strategies can help students to retain new information. 

 1/8/25 -  Teaching Multilingual Learners Strategies  - How can math teachers teach multilingual learners? What strategies work to increase student understanding? Try using consistent frameworks, sentence stems, and turn and talks. 

1/9/25 - Helping Students to Attend to Precision - Do you want your students to attend to precision? Do you often find yourself identifying student's mistakes for them? Do you see a lot of hands up in the air waiting for you to check work? Try these 2 strategies to help students learn how to check their own precision.

1/20/25 - Writing in Math - We often hear that we want to get students to improve their writing in math skills, but what does that mean? What is that we want students to write about? Why do we want them to write? What specific strategies can we use to set students up for success in writing in math?

1/29/25 - Turn-and-talks Level II -  Have you been using turn-and-talks but want to bring them to the next level? How do you ensure that this classroom tool is maximizing student understanding and growth? 

2/11/25 - Tools AND Toys -  They're Tools NOT Toys! Have you said that? Maybe you should rethink your approach. The point of manipulatives is to allow students to play with, to touch the mathematics we are talking about. Here are some things you need to know about using manipulatives in your classroom. 

2/12/25 - Stop Annotating Word Problems -  Do you have students who struggle to start working on word problems? Maybe you are helping them too much. 

2/24/25 - Stop Rephrasing Student Answers -  Do you often rephrase what students are saying? Have you considered that actually takes away their voice as a mathematician? Do you want more students to listen and respond to each other in class? Stop rephrasing student answers. 

3/5/25 - Creating Partner Talk for Precision in Math -  How do you get students to work together? How do you ensure student partners help each other with precision and accuracy? I saw a 2nd grade teacher do it masterfully! 

3/17/25 - Don't Start with Homework - Do you start your class by reviewing homework? I'm going to recommend that you stop. Here's why...

3/27/25 - Fact Fluency versus Computational Fluency - Do your students lack fact fluency? Does that matter? Consider this...

3/31/25 - Evaluations Should HELP Teachers -  Are you a teacher evaluator? Do you want to actually help teachers improve their craft? Do you find yourself unsure what feedback to give, or is it sometimes too much? 

4/1/25 - How the Brain Learns Reading versus How the Brain Learns Math - Do you teach both math AND reading? Did you know that the brain learns math and reading in different ways?

4/4/25 - Co-teaching Strategy: Divide the Classroom - Are you not sure where you should be in the co-taught classroom? Does one teacher tend to do more of the work? How can you use co-teachers to raise student voice?

4/5/25 - Co-teaching Strategy: Co-create Anchor Charts -  Do you co-teach with another teacher? Are you wondering what both teachers can do during whole class instruction, instead of one teacher just sitting off to the side? 

4/8/25 - Co-teaching Strategy: Differentiated Small Groups -  Do you teach in a room with multiple adults? Do you sometimes wonder how you can reach more students' needs with those adults? Are you unsure how to best use each adult effectively? 

4/16/25 - Don't Write Scores on Test - If you want to have students actually read the written feedback on tests and quizzes, consider not writing the score.

5/8/25 - Don't Rescue Students -  Do you have students raise their hands immediately after you explained the directions? If so, you might be doing this. 

5/19/25 - Do Math Warmups Really Work? -  How do you start your math class? There are proven ways that will enable your students to begin with strong engagement and start your class on the right foot.