Flashcards: Weapons of Math Distraction

Cheese Mover, Fact Fluency, Teaching in a Context

What did SMP #1 say to the flash card? ……”You suck!” We’ve been using a math reasoning inventory as our benchmark assessment for the past 5 years.  In that time there’s been tremendous growth (in small pockets), but...

Understanding Content Beyond Your Grade Level

Cheese Mover, Who Knows?

Imagine having a conference with your child’s 2nd grade teacher and the teacher says… “your child is doing really well in reading and a lot of her questions stretch my thinking”.  As a parent you’d become super stoked, proud of your...

Teaching Without Numerals: Lesson #1

Cheese Mover, Strategy Development

This whole “how to teach math without numerals” kick I’m on  is blowing my mind.  I tried this out in a 3rd grade class using one of my favorite problems.  Here’s how two students solved this problem and what’s awesome about it is that they used completely...

No Numerals Allowed in Math Class

Cheese Mover, Who Knows?

Take a moment to think about how we learn language. We start out by listening to parents and family members for the first two years of our life and then we eventually begin to talk.  Only after we have learned to listen and verbalize our language are we able to...