Math Coach’s Corner Blog
Real-World Math: My New Picket Fence
As I write, the thump of sledgehammers and the whir of buzz saws can be heard outside my kitchen window. In my small community of houses, we all have white picket fences in our front yards. It was actually part of the charm that sold me on the house. The fences,...
1st Grade Essentials: Basic Fact Strategies
With pages of math standards at each grade level, what is really considered essential learning? In this series of posts, I attempt to highlight the key skills at every grade level, explain those skills in layman's terms, and provide activities and tasks for helping...
Real World Math: Cooking for One
Stop for a minute and reflect on your definition of real-world math. Often, we think of real-world math as word problems that use a real-life situation as the context. My only problem with that definition is that in the real world, math is often messy. Consider, for...
Real World Math: Toilet Paper
Look no further than your local grocery store and current events for this real-world math problem! Here's the problem: A family of four uses two-thirds of a 6-roll package of toilet paper each week. How long will 4 packages last? Lots of good math in there! First, you...
Kindergarten Essentials: Combinations for Numbers Through 10
What does Kindergarten math look like? What are the essential skills that every Kindergarten student should master prior to Grade 1? Believe it or not, fact fluency starts in Kindergarten! Now, before you whip out those flashcards (the way many of us learned our...
Games for Practicing Math: Multiple Versions of Yahtzee
What makes math practice fun? Games of course! There are tons of widely available games that incorporate math skills. Today's post explores the classic game of Yahtzee and several variations. This post contains affiliate links, which simply means that when you use my...
Math Activities for At-Home Learning
As many of us find ourselves in the position to provide distance math learning opportunities for our students, online resources can be a tremendous help. Unfortunately, a large number of our students do not have access to technology at home and, even for those who do,...
Online Resources for Supporting Math Learning at Home
Well, we are all in a situation that none of us could have imagined even a month ago. My school is out for Spring Break next week and at least an extra week after that. It is the expectation that our teachers provide distance learning for our students beginning the...
Do This, Not That: Accountability & Assessment
The first question I am often asked related to Math Workshop is How do I hold the students accountable? I'm going to be brutally honest: holding your students accountable for the work they do in their workstations can make or break the success of a guided math...
Do This, Not That: Aligning to Standards
As students spend increasingly more time engaged in independent math workshop tasks, it's essential that we align those tasks to our content standards and math process standards. This post is the second in a series of three. Check out the first post here, and there is...