WORDS OF MATH WISDOM FROM DR. NICKI
- Make sure problem solving is REAL for the students. (i.e., Most people don't have 234 apples or have a friend with 359 apples, so you can figure out how many apples you have altogether.) Think REALITY problems that make sense to where we live.
- Give students BENCHMARKS for measurement. Don't assume students can imagine 1/2 an inch or a yardstick on their own. (i.e., The width of my pinky is about 1/2 inch. If I spread my arms out like a bird, my wingspan is about 36 inches.)
- Teach decimals with menus and sales flyer to make it more meaningful for students.
- Have students solve a problem one way and check it another way.
- Get away from KEY WORDS for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division when problem solving because it's not always helpful to students. (i.e., TJ has three less baseball cards than Ethan. Ethan has seven baseball cards. How many baseball cards does TJ have? Answer: TJ has four baseball cards.)
- When teaching math, you can break up domains, but DO NOT break up clusters.
- Check out the Making Number Talks Matter Blog. Scroll to the bottom to preview the new text, the entire text. Find out what number talks are, why they are so important, and how to get them started in your K-6 classroom.
- Check out Howard County Schools per Dr. Nicki's request. For each grade level, they have a page/s for each domain listing important vocabulary, activities students could practice at home, and learning links, or computer games, that could be used at school and at home. Here is a sampling:
- Kindergarten Counting and Cardinality
- First Grade Numbers and Operations Base Ten
- Second Grade Operations and Algebraic Thinking
- Third Grade Number and Operations (Fractions)
- Fourth Grade Measurement and Data
- Fifth Grade Geometry
- Sixth Grade Expressions and Equations
- Dr. Nicki also likes the Read Tennesee Math Site. For each mathematical practice, this site provides videos to watch, articles to read, websites to explore, and how to apply the mathematical practice in the classroom. Here is a sampling:
- Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them
- Reason abstractly and quantitatively
- Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others
- Model with mathematics
- Use appropriate tools strategically
- Attend to precision
- Look for and make use of structure
- Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning
- Dr. Nicki also suggested looking at what the Arizona Department of Education has put together. They have a document for each grade level that includes the standard, what mathematical practices go with the standard, and explanations and examples of the standard. Here is a sampling of what you can find on the Arizona math site:
HAPPY MATHING!
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