Why Seekers & Solvers?
A note on the name of this blog. I listened to the most beautiful description of what we want to build in mathematicians several weeks ago. A brilliant colleague of mine (Pete Prince, to be specific, who is co-head of…
On Making Mistakes in Math
A true story “My dad says mistakes are good,” a second grader shared. “He said they help you learn.” We were discussing the importance of giving hard things a try, even if we don’t always succeed. “It is sort of…
On Fact Fluency
Sometimes the best definition is so brief and obvious…if you were to ask me just yesterday how to define fact fluency I would have given you a mouthful of alphabet soup teacher-ese. This morning, over coffee, shuffling through some of…
Let’s Play… Tenzi!
If you’ve read the previous post on the fundamentals of counting, then subitizing is not news to you. If you haven’t yet, here is a link to that post! Tenzi is one of my favorite at-home-fun-for-everyone games that has a…
Flexible Multiplication: The Associative Property
Today we briefly talked about something I’m not going to name for the students just yet, because we are still playing! We’re on a cliffhanger until Monday. We left this unresolved for now… What I can tell you is that…
Celebrating Earth Day the Math Way
In honor of Earth Day, I wanted to take a moment to share part of a TedX talk from Australian math educator Eddie Woo. He shares the most magical explorations of what math is and how it is apparent in…
Data Literacy: Reading the World!
Data literacy is one of the more important skills we can build in young mathematicians, and one that is very fun to support both in the classroom and at home. There is so much to understand about the world when…
The Math of Poetry (not to be confused with the Poetry of Math)
April marks the 30th year of National Poetry Month and with it a new way to explore the math that infuses the beauty of language. What do you think about when you consider how math and poetry might be related?…
On the Hunt for Math at MoMA
You’re dropping one kid at a birthday party in midtown and you’ve got the other kid in tow. Heading home is an option, though the moment you arrive home it will be time to reverse course and head back to…
“Use The Math You Know”
“Use the math you know.” It is one of my most important mantras. In fact, I rarely have to say it anymore. When I review an upcoming homework assignment with my students, and we come to a tricky looking or…
The Interior Life of Addition
We’ve covered the critical pieces of developing counting with meaning in this post. What happens next? Enter additive thinking! When counting gives way to reasoning, it is the beginning of additive thinking. The journey from “count everything” to “just know…
Dice and Dominoes
Dice and dominoes are probably some of the first quantities we consciously subitize and assign a numerical value to as children. (Subitizing, you say? What’s that? Check out this post on the many nuances of counting.) The “pip” or dot…
Counting: “Easy as 1-2-3”?
What would you think if I told you counting was actually not as easy as 1-2-3? I was as surprised as you when I studied the development of numeracy in our youngest mathematicians. What we might consider done and dusted…
Maryam Mirzakhani: Curiosity and Creativity
This post features ideas and text from student guest editor E.B. from Class III. Maryan Mirzakhani is one of the mathematicians we learn about as we explore the habits of mind of mathematicians who have accomplished amazing things. We often…
Making Connections and Asking “Why?”
When a student is used to scrutinizing the values she is working with, the connections emerge. Often the kids are so excited to share the connections they’ve made that they annotate their math homework or burst into an excited monologue…
“What would you tell a first grader?”
This is what I asked my second graders when reviewing their homework assignment, which included a question asking them to choose one of three basic addition facts and one of three basic subtraction facts that they found interesting or perhaps…
Andrew Wiles: Patience and Persistence
Andrew WIles was a puzzle-loving ten year old when he came across Fermat’s Last Theorem in a book in his local library. He was ten when he decided that he would be the one to discover the proof that Fermat…
Two Dice
How many dots do you see? HOW do you see them? This image appears in our Kindergarten curriculum as part of something called a “dot talk.” This is an opportunity for students to see math as something that is perceived…
Math Colored Glasses
Math colored glasses are really just a way of describing a curious, noticing mindset. When you put them on while you are out and about, you start to see the world a little differently. You notice patterns in the tiles…