One of the questions I get asked most frequently as the school year comes to an end is What can we do over summer break to keep our children from forgetting what they learned during the school year? Oh, the dreaded “summer slide.” It’s one of the reasons I loved the year round schedule used at one of the schools where…
Fueling sense making. This is the point of being a teacher in any subject, right? Finding ways to push students from being mere recipients of information to thinking critically about that information and using it to construct their own real knowledge. For years I have battled within myself about the merits of memorizing math facts. I know being fast at math…
Have you ever had trouble remembering how to “carry the one” or had difficulty understanding what it means to “borrow?” Do you pause when deciding which way to “move” a decimal or how many zeros to “add” to the end of a number? Most people I talk to believe math is a {really, really large} set of rules and steps and…
There has been a lot of discussion in recent years about making math relevant for students. Making math relevant really just means showing a student the practical purpose for math in a way that feels useful. The thinking is that kids will be more likely to take an interest in learning a particular math concept or skill if they have a…
Featured Photo Credit: Atlas Green Have you ever noticed that when someone holds up a few fingers and asks you how many you see, you don’t have to count them? You just intuitively know that three fingers is three fingers and that five fingers is five fingers. Same kind of deal when you a playing a game with dice. Chances are that…