Teachers and adults can try out and discuss math activities for kids in the classroom and at home. The Ideas at Work series aims to highlight real-world examples of adults finding the math in activities, games, and everyday life.
September 11, 2018
Moving from one activity to another just got a lot more mathematical with this simple routine that builds early number sense with preschoolers.
Ellen Stoll Walsh's book Mouse Count can be used in the classroom to cover such broad-ranging topics as data analysis, number sense, and number and operations. Key concepts such as estimation can be explored and…
Teachers in four schools recently experimented with a "problem stem" protocol for helping their children understand the math going on in the word problems they face in class. This was part of our Big Shoulders…
It’s autumn, which means there’s a feeling that cold weather is on its way. A small comfort in the changing weather is that it offers some opportunities for winter math activities.
Cutting paper hearts for Valentine’s Day math fun is a common, early experience with symmetry for many young children.
Counting is a complex task that is often taken for granted. As described in the Collaborative's book Big Ideas in Early Mathematics, there are two different types: rote counting and rational counting. While both are…
A Chicago-area teacher's intentional teaching and efforts to differentiate for students of varying ability and confidence resulted in a rich math lesson. Based on Audrey Wood's classic book The Napping House, students created their own…
Facilitating discussion in math class is a particularly powerful teaching method. It challenges students to put their solution strategy into words. It promotes communication between students. It also highlights any unclear steps that may have…
Teachers in the Innovations Project have been making use of the Contexts for Learning Investigations, a series of mini-lessons, games, and storybooks based around overarching math learning goals. The developers of this series argue that…
This blog post provides some great ideas for first grade Number Talks sessions. These 10-15 minute activities can be centered around the rekenrek or dot cards and are designed to reinforce students’ understanding of number…