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The Build Math Minds podcast is for my fellow Recovering Traditionalists out there. If you don’t know whether or not you are a Recovering Traditionalist, here’s how I define us. We are math educators who used to teach math the traditional way. Flip lesson by lesson in the textbook, directly teaching step-by-step how to solve math problems. But now, we are working to change that to a style of teaching math that is fun and meets our students where they are at, not just teaching what comes next in the textbook. We want to encourage our students to be thinkers, problem solvers, and lovers of mathematics..we are wanting to build our students math minds and not just create calculators. If that is you, then this podcast is for you.
It's been an incredible journey over the past two weeks as we've explored nine key strategies to Kickstart your students' number sense. Now, as we reach the end of this Kickstart event, it's essential to understand that the foundations you're laying are seeds of number sense, and their growth will be gradual. These principles we've discussed serve as the blueprint for you to navigate through the upcoming school year:
Do Number Routines and Contextual Problems with a focus on understanding. Watch for your students’ thinking around the number sense concepts. Keep a record of those understandings to help guide the number routines & contextual problems you pick. While you are doing the number routines and contextual problems, make sure the students are doing the talking and you are listening. Use lots of visuals and try to connect the C-R-A models as much as you can. And then practice. Once the understanding is there, kids do need repeated, PURPOSEFUL practice.
That’s your blueprint.
Today, on Day 10, it's time to take this blueprint for building your students' number sense seriously. I've explored concepts, practical strategies, and provided resources to assist you on this path. However, there's more to discover, and if you are ready to explore these ideas further your Day 10 action item is: enroll in my online courses, The Flexibility Formula, tailored for K-2 and 3-5: https://buildmathminds.com/enroll/
The saying "Practice Makes Perfect" often implies that repetition leads to mastery. However, practicing something you do poorly, or incorrectly, doesn't make it perfect; it instead reinforces bad habits. Practice actually makes PERMANENT.
Practice is crucial, but it should follow the establishment of a strong sense of numbers. Day 9’s tip is to find a new way for students to practice math.
Today's audio message discusses two valuable approaches to make practice more enjoyable and connected to your students’ current mathematical needs: using math games and offering students choice during math practice. Listen in to get the details.
Practice is essential for reinforcing knowledge, but let’s do it in a way that is fun, differentiates for your students, and allows for students to reinforce the good mathematical thinking they’ve been building.
Get access to all the resources mentioned when you register for the Kickstart here: BuildMathMinds.com/10Day-kickstart
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If you are looking for a comprehensive online course for elementary educators that will help you better understand and implement the ideas in this Number Sense Kickstart, join The Flexibility Formula Course.
During the 10-Day Kickstart you can get a special gift when you enroll by October 19, 2023. Go to BuildMathMinds.com/enroll to pick the grade level of the course (K-2 or 3-5) and get enrolled.
Day 8 of the Number Sense Kickstart emphasizes a simple, yet sometimes difficult, teaching strategy: Let students solve story problems, don’t give them the steps.
The concept of Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) plays a pivotal role here. It acknowledges that students bring their innate mathematical knowledge shaped by everyday experiences with numbers to the table when solving problems. Students often solve problems in different ways than we think they should mathematically…however their strategies are often rooted in the context of the problem so it’s helpful for educators to know the different problem types.
Your task for Day 8 is to select a problem from your textbook, ensure it meets the math content you need for the day, display it, and have your students solve it without offering explicit solution steps. Details on this are in today’s training.
This shift is often difficult for the kids (and you) so, if needed, you can experiment with Numberless Word Problems, an approach developed by Brian Bushart, which gradually introduces numerical information into word problems while promoting critical thinking and mathematical discourse.
As you implement the use of story problems, continue to focus on understanding, identify underlying number concepts, record student insights, actively listen, encourage visual representations, and embrace a variety of models to help kids build connections.
Get access to all the resources mentioned when you register for the Kickstart here: BuildMathMinds.com/10Day-kickstart
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If you are looking for a comprehensive online course for elementary educators that will help you better understand and implement the ideas in this Number Sense Kickstart, join The Flexibility Formula Course.
During the 10-Day Kickstart you can get a special gift when you enroll by October 19, 2023. Go to BuildMathMinds.com/enroll to pick the grade level of the course (K-2 or 3-5) and get enrolled.
In Day 7 of our Number Sense Kickstart we are shifting from the theoretical ideas I’ve shared so far into practical classroom strategies that make it easier to do the theoretical ideas.
Our first practical idea is to do a Number Routine with your students. These structured, brief activities, taking just 5-10 minutes, are a potent tool for meaningful math engagement. Number Routines help students develop the 8 number sense concepts, encouraging them to interact with numbers and share their thinking.
Number Routines create opportunities for deep mathematical understanding and allow teachers to listen more and talk less, gaining insights into student number sense. They can be visual or abstract, but when possible, it's beneficial to incorporate visuals to help your students make connections using the Concrete-Representational-Abstract models.
Listen to the training for today to learn more about Number Routines so you can use one with your students tomorrow.
Get access to all the resources mentioned when you register for the Kickstart here: BuildMathMinds.com/10Day-kickstart
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If you are looking for a comprehensive online course for elementary educators that will help you better understand and implement the ideas in this Number Sense Kickstart, join The Flexibility Formula Course.
During the 10-Day Kickstart you can get a special gift when you enroll by October 19, 2023. Go to BuildMathMinds.com/enroll to pick the grade level of the course (K-2 or 3-5) and get enrolled.
Today we're diving into the Concrete-Representational-Abstract (C-R-A) model of teaching mathematics.
Typically, these stages are presented in isolation, with separate lessons for each. However, the real impact comes when all three are combined in a single lesson. This integration helps students see connections between different problem-solving methods and leads to those "A-HA" moments.
The action item for Day 6 of the Number Sense Kickstart is to seek opportunities to combine C-R-A in your math lessons. Whether in your textbook or your upcoming lesson, aim to integrate all three stages. Learn more about embracing this model to empower students to develop a deep understanding of mathematics.
Get access to all the resources mentioned when you register for the Kickstart here: BuildMathMinds.com/10Day-kickstart
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If you are looking for a comprehensive online course for elementary educators that will help you better understand and implement the ideas in this Number Sense Kickstart, join The Flexibility Formula Course.
During the 10-Day Kickstart you can get a special gift when you enroll by October 19, 2023. Go to BuildMathMinds.com/enroll to pick the grade level of the course (K-2 or 3-5) and get enrolled.
It’s Day 5 of the Number Sense Kickstart and we're focusing on the power of visuals in elementary math education. Just like in reading, where creating mental images enhances comprehension, visuals are essential in math to deepen students' understanding of numbers and mathematical operations. However, sometimes the visuals that are in math textbooks and worksheets you download off the internet don’t actually help students understand the math.
In today’s training we look at ensuring that visuals you use in elementary math lessons help students make sense of the mathematics. There are lots of cases where the visuals being used in the lesson are more of a distraction than helping your students make sense of the math.
Get access to the Math Visuals Decision Tree and the Google Slides of Math Visuals when you register for the Kickstart here: BuildMathMinds.com/10Day-kickstart
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If you are looking for a comprehensive online course for elementary educators that will help you better understand and implement the ideas in this Number Sense Kickstart, join The Flexibility Formula Course.
During the 10-Day Kickstart you can get a special gift when you enroll by October 19, 2023. Go to BuildMathMinds.com/enroll to pick the grade level of the course (K-2 or 3-5) and get enrolled.
This is Day 4 of the Number Sense Kickstart and we are exploring the profound impact of active listening in the classroom.
Did you know that in the typical classroom, teachers do 89% of the talking, while students ask only 11 questions a day, primarily procedural ones? It's time to change this narrative and shift the balance toward student engagement.
We draw inspiration from educator Steven C. Reinhart’s article “Never Say Anything a Kid Can Say For You.” We explore his five techniques that are shared in the article. These techniques will guide you on your path to fostering student empowerment and deep mathematical understanding.
So, are you ready to transform your math classroom? Tune in to learn how to empower your students and truly understand their mathematical thinking. Day 4's tip is simple yet impactful: "Stop Talking & Start Listening."
Find practical strategies and resources on our Kickstart page to kickstart this transformation here: BuildMathMinds.com/10Day-kickstart
Most textbooks are focused on answer-getting so their assessments are also focused on just answer-getting. That doesn’t tell you anything about what your students understand, only what they can do. To ensure you are building your students’ understanding of numbers, you need some way to keep track of what they are understanding.
It’s Day 3 of the Number Sense Kickstart and today is all about recording what your students understand about the 8 number sense concepts. If you have taken The Flexibility Formula course, you have detailed information and observation sheets to help you do this. If not, Christina Tondevold gives you a simplified way to record what you are noticing about your students’ number sense. Tune in to listen or even go watch this episode over on the Build Math Minds’ YouTube channel so you can see part of the recording sheet: https://www.youtube.com/buildmathminds
Have you joined the Kickstart yet? Get the 10 Day checklist and the link to all resources mentioned by joining the 10-Day Number Sense Kickstart here: BuildMathMinds.com/10Day-kickstart
Mathematics is so much more than just getting the answers. Answers are important, but that really doesn’t tell you what your students UNDERSTAND about math, it only tells you what they can DO.
If you want to see what your students understand there are 8 number sense concepts that are the root of understanding numbers. It’s Day 2 of our Number Sense Kickstart and in today’s episode Christina Tondevold is detailing each of those 8 number sense concepts. This is the longest video of our Kickstart and if you’ve taken Christina’s online course for teachers, The Flexibility Formula, you already know this information and can skip today’s episode and just do the tip for today: Determine what your students actually need to understand to do the lesson for tomorrow. If you haven’t heard of these 8 number sense concepts before, take a listen.
Download the 10 Day checklist and get the link to all resources mentioned by joining the 10-Day Number Sense Kickstart here: BuildMathMinds.com/10Day-kickstart
Do you have students struggling with their number sense and fluency in elementary mathematics? You aren’t the only one! Over the last few years we’ve seen gaps in students’ understanding get bigger and bigger. So many elementary students are not fluent with math and the underlying issue is their lack of number sense. Textbooks often jump straight into having kids operate with numbers but they have no number sense to be able to understand why the procedures even work. That’s why we’ve created the 10-Day Number Sense Kickstart to help you kickstart your students’ number sense this year.
Over the next two weeks, Christina Tondevold will give you one tip each school day to build your students’ number sense and increase their fluency with mathematics. By the end of this Kickstart, you’ll have a roadmap to keep building it throughout this school year. Today’s episode is Day 1 of the Kickstart.
Download the 10 Day checklist and get the link to all resources mentioned by joining the 10-Day Number Sense Kickstart here: BuildMathMinds.com/10Day-kickstart
Amanda is a wife. A mother. A blogger. A Christian.
A charming, beautiful, bubbly, young woman who lives life to the fullest.
But Amanda is dying, with a secret she doesn’t want anyone to know.
She starts a blog detailing her cancer journey, and becomes an inspiration, touching and
captivating her local community as well as followers all over the world.
Until one day investigative producer Nancy gets an anonymous tip telling her to look at Amanda’s
blog, setting Nancy on an unimaginable road to uncover Amanda’s secret.
Award winning journalist Charlie Webster explores this unbelievable and bizarre, but
all-too-real tale, of a woman from San Jose, California whose secret ripped a family apart and
left a community in shock.
Scamanda is the true story of a woman whose own words held the key to her secret.
New episodes every Monday.
Follow Scamanda on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
Amanda’s blog posts are read by actor Kendall Horn.
