Instructional Strategies for K-8 Teachers

Pack Your Bags!

Fill three of your bags with an interesting fact about your life and one bag with a fantastic lie. Template

Making Groups

• Color-code activity papers… Each table group gets a set of papers, each activity paper of different color. Arrange students in groups based on the color of their activity paper.
• Playing cards… Using the four suits of each card value, make groups of 2, 3, or 4.
• Count… There are 32 students in your class. You want to make groups of four. Start with one student and have students call out the numbers to eight. Continue until all students have a number. (Encourage students to write down the number or hold out that many fingers.) You will end up with eight groups of four. Ones are a group; twos are a group; threes are a group, and so on...

Books

• Donovan, Suzanne, and John Bransford. How Students Learn: Mathematics in the Classroom. Washington, D.C.: National Academies, 2005. Print.
• Herrera, Terese, Timothy D. Kanold, Roberta K. Koss, Patrick Ryan, and William R. Speer. Mathematics Teaching Today. Second ed. Reston: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2007. Print.
• Humphreys, Cathy, and Ruth E. Parker. Making Number Talks Matter: Developing Mathematical Practices and Deepening Understanding, Grades 4-10. Stenhouse, 2015. Print. GWAEA Media Center
• Kazemi, Elham, and Allison Hintz. Intentional Talk: How to Structure and Lead Productive Mathematical Discussions. Stenhouse, 2014. Print. GWAEA Media Center
• Parrish, Sherry. Number Talks: Helping Children Build Mental Math and Computation Strategies, Grades K-5. Sausalito, CA: Math Solutions, 2010. Print. GWAEA Media Center
• Rose, Cheryl M., Leslie Minton, and Carolyn Arline. Uncovering Student Thinking in Mathematics: 25 Formative Assessment Probes. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2007. Print. GWAEA Media Center
• Seeley, Cathy L. Faster Isn't Smarter. Sausalito: Math Solutions, 2009. Print. GWAEA Media Center
• Seeley, Cathy L. Smarter Than We Think More Messages About Math, Teaching, and Learning in the 21st Century. Sausalito: Math Solutions, 2014. Print. GWAEA Media Center
• Smith, Margaret S., and Mary Kay Stein. 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions. Ninth ed. Reston: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2013. Print. GWAEA Media Center

Articles

• Bleiler, Sarah K., Wesley A. Baxter, D. Christopher Stephens, and Angela T. Barlow. "Constructing Meaning: Standards for Mathematical Practice." Teaching Children Mathematics 21.6 (2015): 336-44. Web.
• Buchholz, Lisa M. "A License to Think on the Road to Fact Fluency." Teaching Children Mathematics 22.9 (2016): 556-62. Web.
• Goodwin, Bryan, and Kirsten Miller. "Good Feedback Is Targeted, Specific, Timely." Educational Leadership 70.1 (2012): 82-83. Web.
• Kabiri, Mary S., and Nancy L. Smith. “Turning Traditional Textbook Problems into Open-Ended Problems.” Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School 9.3 (2003): 186-192. Web.
• Karp, Karen S., Sarah B. Bush, and Barbara J. Dougherty. "13 Rules That Expire." Teaching Children Mathematics 21.1 (2014): 18-25. Web.
• Kling, Gina, and Jennifer Bay-Williams. "Assessing Basic Fact Fluency."Teaching Children Mathematics 20.8 (2014): 488-97. Web.
• Mcgatha, Maggie B., and Jennifer M. Bay-Williams. "Making Shifts toward Proficiency." Teaching Children Mathematics 20.3 (2013): 167. Web.
• Parrish, Sherry D. "Number Talks Build Numerical Reasoning." Teaching Children Mathematics 18.3 (2011): 198-206. Web.
• Stein, Mary Kay, Randi A. Engle, Margaret S. Smith, and Elizabeth K. Hughes. "Orchestrating Discussions." Mathematics Teaching in the MIddle School14.9 (2009): 549-56. Web.
• Umbeck, Lindsay M. "Navigating Classroom Change." Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School 17.2 (2011): 88-95. Web.

World Cafe

This is an easy-to-use method for creating a living network of collaborative dialogue around questions that matter. Find questions that are relevant to the group. It is important to encourage everyone to contribute their ideas and perspectives, while also allowing anyone who wants to participate by simply listening to do so.

Quick Images

In Quick Images, children are shown pictures displaying groups of objects or

symbols, viewing each for only a few seconds. The short period of time to see the

image encourages children to find efficient strategies to determine how many

symbols there are, rather than counting one-by-one. Teachers might use printed

images, dot stickers arranged on a note card, a ten frame, PowerPoint slides, or a

magnetic board with magnets.

• Quick Image Primer
• Hand-held Ten Frame Magnetic Boards GWAEA Media Center

Whole Number Computation and Iowa Core Mathematics

• Number Base Ten K-6 and Required Fluencies chart
• Solve with Multiple Methods work page

Videos

This is a list of classroom videos that students of this course chose because they reflected a strategy and/or mathematical practice used in class.

• A Passion for Fractions (Multiply a fraction by a fraction)
• Assess and Plan with Exit Tickets (Use exit tickets to assess learning and plan future lessons)
• Beyond Fingers: Place Value and Numbers 11-19 (Understand the numbers 11-19 as 10 ones and some further ones)
• Conjecturing About Functions (Standards for Mathematical Practices)
• Creating a Community of Learners (Help students learn together)
• Creating a Culture of Collaborative Learning (Engage in a learning lab cycle)
• Developing a Passion for Math (Inspire students to engage in problem solving)
• Don’t Give Up! Plan, Persevere and Revise (Practice perseverance by tackling a multi-step geometry problem)
• Dot Talks: Building Fluency with Numbers (Share addition strategies through a dot talk)
• Encouraging Students to Persist Through Challenging Problems (Help students develop growth mindsets by providing challenging work)
• Engaging Students in Productive Struggle: Number Talks (Explore subtraction strategies through student-led number talks)
• Exploring Math Practice Standards: Precision (Focus on precision when solving and discussing math problems)
• Improving Participation with Talk Moves (Encourage participation and collaboration)
• Language Supports for Number Talks (Support academic conversation with sentence frames)
• Learning Menus: Giving Options and Independence (Use learning menus to provide students with independent exploration of concepts)
• Meeting Students Needs in Number Talks (Use Number Talk check-ins to formatively assess students and provide tailored instruction)
• Open-Ended Questions to Encourage Conversations (Use open-ended questions to encourage academic thinking and conversation)
• Owning the Common Core Math Practices (Reflect on the use of math practices)
• Reasoning About Multiplication and Division (Build understanding of multiplication and division)
• Skip Counting with Counting Collections (Record strategies when skip counting by 5s and 10s)
• Standards for Mathematical Practice
• Understanding Fractions through Real-World Tasks (Solve a real-world problem about fractions of watermelons)
• Visualizing Number Combinations (Quick Image & Talk Moves)

Talk Moves

• Talk Moves to Support Classroom Discussions chart
• Post Talk Moves in classroom
  • A free poster from Scholastic to print
  • Free bookmarks from Scholastic for partnerships
• Provide sentence starters for students
  • Assign colors to each Talk Move. Partner A says xxx...xxx (one color); Partner B says ooo...ooo (another color). For more details contact Angela Fowler at afowler@cr.k12.ia.us
  • Some good ones to consider
    • “I respectfully disagree with that idea because…”
    • “This idea make sense to me because…”
    • “I’d like to add on…”
    • “I’d like more time…”
    • “I thought… But now I think… because…”
    • “I’d like to revise my thinking.”

Devising Thinking Questions

• Formats for Developing Thinking Questions chart
• Solving with Multiple Methods workpage
• Open Number Line workpage
• Solving with 4 Multiple Methods example
• Solving with 4 Multiple Methods example solutions
• Solving with 2 Multiple Methods example
• Solving with 2 Multiple Methods example solutions
• Open Number Line example
• Open Number Line example solutions

A Mathematical Tug of War

Create groups of 3 or 4. Solve the problem. Write group solution on poster paper. Hang posters for all to view. Be prepared to present the solution.

(Select & Sequence) In your group, decide and record which solutions are similar; decide the order you would put them in and be prepared to defend why; record your “order” on the whiteboard.

Standards for Mathematical Practice

• Kansas Flipbooks
• Posters

Number Talks

• Getting Number Talks Started
• Mental Math Planning template
• Sample 111-28

Marble Problem

Explain why this bag gives you the best chance of picking a blue marble. Template

True/False Equations

• True/False Equations Primer
• Math Balance GWAEA Media Center

Blogs & Websites to follow

• Cathy Seeley (a mathematics educator, speaker and writer)
• Dan Meyer (formerly a high school math teacher and currently the chief academic officer of DESMOS)
• Teaching Channel Teaching Channel is a thriving online community where teachers can watch, share, and learn diverse techniques to help every student grow.
• TEDD The Teacher Education by Design (TEDD) project was undertaken by the College of Education at the University of Washington, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in response to some of the perennial challenges of preparing novice teachers. One challenge teacher educators have faced is that novice teachers often take up relatively little of what they have been exposed to in programs of teacher education. Another concern, voiced by teacher educators and novices, is that coursework is too “theoretical” and not “practical” enough. A third issue is the lack of a substantive knowledge base within the field of teacher education with respect to its own pedagogical practices.
• Steve Leinwand (A math education change agent) Great Online Math Resources

Basic Facts

• Fluency… flexible, accurate, efficient and appropriate strategy use
• Foundational Facts
• Derived Facts