Teachers agree that memorizing multiplication facts is such a challenging part of elementary school. In fact, I surveyed more than 20,000 teachers about their biggest challenge in math instruction. The most overwhelming response was that their students don’t know their math facts. This issue is a not a new trend. Math facts, especially memorizing multiplication […]
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Multiplication interventions are incredibly important for students struggling in math. In third, fourth, and fifth grades, there are few math concepts more important for students than multiplication. This builds the foundation of multiple other math topics and concepts. However, many students need additional instruction and remediation during and/or after their multiplication unit. This blog post
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Multi-part or multi-step word problems has to be one of — if not THE — most challenging parts of the year. I’ve found that saving multi-step word problems for the very end of the year or right before testing is the least efficient way to teach this tricky skill. Instead, students need instruction on multi-step
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Math fluency plays a critical role in the upper elementary classroom, and I hope to share some of my favorite strategies with you. No matter what state you teach in, more than likely math fluency is mentioned somewhere in your standards. However, before beginning a blog post on math fact fluency, it’s essential to fully
These number sense routines can be a game-changer for your students. Last year, I wrote a blog post solely dedicated to teaching number sense. That post shares a more general overview of what number sense is and why it’s important. This post moves directly into ways to improve students’ number sense. I’ve shared some of
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Over the past few weeks, I have immersed myself into learning more about 3 act math tasks. I have spent hours reading Robert Kaplinsky, Graham Fletcher, and others to develop my understanding of these tasks. I plan to write an extensive blog post sharing what I’ve learned and ways you can use these tasks, and
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Anyone who has spent time teaching math has experienced assigning students a word problem and watching them “solve” the problem without even thinking about which operation(s) to use, why they should use that operation, or the meaning of the problem. When I first noticed this, I began teaching key words, and they worked. Usually. However,
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After I finish my place value remediation lessons, I begin my lessons for subtraction and addition remediation. I always begin with addition, but I do intermix fact families as I teach addition. This allows subtraction to become a more natural form of computation for students. These lessons begin very easy, but they build a conceptual
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Place value interventions are essential for students with difficulty in math. There is a very big difference between getting place value questions correct on a quiz or being able to identify the place value of value of a digit in a number and truly understanding place value. When I begin remediating students in math, I
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Finding a high quality math intervention program is a bit like finding a magical unicorn. It’s not an easy task! In almost any elementary classroom, there will be at least one student that needs math remediation. Remediation is the process of providing assistance to students who are experiencing difficulties so that they can understand the
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