Danielle M. Brison, M.Ed.

My name is Danielle Brison and I have 17 years experience with the Cinnaminson School District, in which I have worked as a second grade teacher. For the past 13 years I have also been teaching graduate courses for TCNJ and LaSalle University in the subjects of Differentiated Instruction, Cooperative Learning, and most recently an I-Pads in the Classroom course. This year I am taking on the position of Math Basic Skills Teacher. Math is one of my favorite subjects because it can be challenging. I hope to help students understand that challenging does not mean too hard, but instead for them to feel the accomplishment that you feel from working hard on a challenge. I am very excited to work with the first and second grade students and hope my love of math and experience with instructional strategies will help them get excited and want to explore the subject.

I created this site in order to share information, skills, strategies, websites, and classroom news. Please check back often to see what we are doing in class and to explore the resources.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me at brisond@cinnaminson.com

Math Basic Skills

This program will be available for students who need extra support in the area of math based on teacher recommendation and scores.

If they meet the placement requirements these students will meet with me for a scheduled amount of time weekly to strengthen their understanding of mathematical concepts.

My goals in this program are to strengthen fact fluency, number sense and support the skills they are learning in the classroom.

• Fact fluency– This will be practiced by doing weekly sprints. Sprints are a fun way to challenge themselves and beat their own score on a daily basis. Students will be working from addition through subtraction starting with 10 problems at a time. Each set will involve a new skill or strategy to be used and be grouped strategically. For example, + 0 and after they master those ten we will move on to +1 and practice counting from a specific number, which is where number sense will help strengthen this area instead of just memorizing meaningless numbers.
• Number sense– This is much like the common sense of math. It is a student’s intuitive understanding of numbers and their relationships and how they are affected by operations. Students who have a sense of what numbers mean, understand their relationship to one another, are able to perform mental math, understands symbolic representations, and can use those numbers in real world situations.
• Problem Solving– This is where the school to life connection will be made. Students will be given opportunities to challenge themselves and make sense of their learning by solving problems using the skills and strategies they have learned. Students will be given opportunities to show what they know by working through a series of problems or steps that will start with simple recall and work through levels of difficulty. This is to encourage problem solving, but more importantly help students to challenge themselves and use what they know to “figure it out”. Real life problems aren’t always black and white and solved the first try and neither are good math problems. Having the ability not to frustrate and check and try again is key to being successful in math.
  • Skill Support– Reinforcement of skills taught in the classroom will be incorporated into the above activities. Providing extra practice and strengthening their skill set in order to perform on daily tasks.