Teaching Math: Tricks of the Trade

Both my educational training and experience as a new teacher give me a lot to share about teaching math. Summarized below are best practices I used in the classroom during my first year as a fourth grade teacher.

Notebooks

When I first started teaching math in my own classroom, I found that students were often unengaged during the instructional portion. As a result, students had difficulty understanding the skill that was being taught. The students each had a graph paper notebook, but it was not utilized aside from pasting vocabulary and anchor charts.

I made the decision to have students write with me in their notebooks during our daily lessons. The combination of using their motor skills in conjunction with their listening and processing skills was beneficial in many ways. I noticed an immediate change in engagement and excitement. My students proudly showed me the work they had written in their notebooks. I also observed a decrease in frustration because students were processing the steps of the lesson while they were writing it.

One unanticipated benefit was the ability for students to return to their notebooks when they were stuck on math problems. The notebook thus served as a personal tool for students to understand and reinforce mathematical concepts.

Grouping Cards + Differentiation

In my educational training, one of my professors had sorted our class into groups based on cards with different numbers, letters, shapes, and shape colors on it. She had explained that it served as a tool for teachers to be able to group students efficiently, but also intentionally. I can use this strategy when playing math games and teaching art projects.

Finding Creative Ways to Apply Concepts

One main focus of my first year of teaching was finding ways to engage all my students in math. For some students, they were able to understand concepts better. They also had more fun when a math lesson on angles was turned into an art project. We would practice using a protractor and draw lines in pencil first. Once students got the hang of it, they were so excited to finish their project! The engagement allowed me time to assist students who were still building their fine motor skills and needed more practice using mathematical tools effectively.

Additionally, I would create assessments that were standards aligned but outside of the curriculum provided test. For example, students looked forward to sorting candy colors on line plots, which was different from a traditional assessment. It was fun and simultaneously demonstrated an understanding of line plots. I strongly believe it provided them a mental break as well.

Math Talks

Math talks are essentially what math is all about – the process of problem solving. I learned about math talks through my program and also implemented it into my classroom. Students would be presented with a problem on the board and take time for themselves to try and solve it. During this time, I would walk around the room, scanning for different solutions and making note of the different strategies I would want to share with my students. I would then ask volunteers or partners of volunteers to share about their thought process and how they got to their answer. Sometimes this would look like having students write on the whiteboard. Other times I would project their work on the screen. This activity emphasized process over product, which I believe is an essential part of math. This mindset also helps build resiliency in mathematics.

As I continue to refine these strategies in the classroom, I will reflect and share them on this blog site. Please share your best practices in the comment section below to support all new teachers learning to teach common core standards math.