If you teach 3rd grade, you know that some students come to your class not knowing their basic addition and subtraction facts. And in 4th and 5th grade, there are students every year that lack mastery of ANY of their basic math facts—addition, subtraction,...
Equality is a hugely important concept in math, and that begins with truly understanding the equal sign. Today I’m sharing with you a mini-lesson that can be used for whole-class instruction or at your small group table and incorporates productive struggle,...
Do you wonder where fact families are found in the current standards? The fact is, current standards don’t actually mention fact families at all anymore. Instead, they refer to “the relationship between operations.” An understanding of this...
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...
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 when students learn to compose and decompose numbers! Now, before you whip out...
