By Tabitha Eutsler, 3rd Grade Teacher “I’m not sure this is working. Only five of my students are participating and commenting each day. The rest sit there and look at me.” This was my conversation with our math coordinator after my first few days of teaching IM K–5...
By Zack Hill The major work of grade 3 includes representing and solving problems that involve multiplication and division. Then, by the end of grade 3, students are expected to know from memory all products of two one-digit numbers. What does this look like and how...
By William McCallum A world where all learners know, use, and enjoy mathematics. Perhaps the most mysterious verb in the IM vision—a world where all learners know, use, and enjoy mathematics—is the first one: know. Knowing mathematics means being able to "do the...
By Kate Nowak How do we help our students build mathematical understandings that endure past the unit test? If we want students to construct strong, reliable bases of mathematical knowledge, our instruction needs to do more than present explicit procedures—even when...
By William McCallum The number line is a seemingly simple object: a straight line with two points marked 0 and 1. Those two points are the seeds of great complexity, however. Whole numbers are located at positions marked off by iterating the interval. Fractions are...
By William McCallum In grade 3, as students start to learn about multiplication, they think about products like 6 x 7 in terms of equal groups. 6 x 7 is the number of things when you have 6 groups with 7 things in each group. They might start out calculating that...
When students notice things, we often ask, ‘Why is that happening?” but it can be challenging to explain why beyond the procedure one followed.
But fifth graders are brilliant.
We want students to think about math deeply. Creatively. Analytically. Instead, what often happens is that students race towards quick solutions. So what can we do to support this other kind of thinking in class—the slow, deep kind? By Jenna Laib One way is through...
The first thing you have to understand is that asking people to model with mathematics makes them mad. Not in all contexts, though! At a social gathering with a generally amiable and curious group of people, you might try floating a question like: I wonder if...
This blog post is the third in a series of four blog posts exploring the student experience of problem-based learning. The first two posts are available here: “How Do Students Perceive Problem-Based Learning?” and “Inviting Students to the Mathematics.” By Max...
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