A couple weeks ago I talked about how 26 ÷ 6 can have multiple answers. This week, I’m back for part 2 of diving deeper into the idea that math problems can have more than one answer. Specifically, we’re going to look at “Open Middle Math Problems.”  Listen in for some great examples of these problems across different grade levels.

Partitive division is typically the natural way that kids think about division and the way that most textbooks start teaching kids division.  However, it only gives kids a partial understanding of division.  Quotative division problems give kids a deeper understanding of division and help kids focus in on understanding the remainder in the problem.  Typically, we think division is only for 3rd grade and up, but division situations come up often for kids in their life and so they naturally experience division very early on.  No matter what grade level you teach, this episode will give you a better understanding of teaching division and teaching division with remainders.

We all know that there are many ways to solve any math problem. But have you considered that there are math problems with more than one answer? While I was getting my masters degree, I learned some valuable lessons from that which I wanted to share with you today. Take a listen as I dive into why it's important to open our minds to the idea that math isn’t just about getting one correct answer.

As we get closer to the holidays, our time is ticking to get some great gifts for our loved ones. I’ve found all kinds of reading based gifts but sometimes, the math ones can be a little tougher to find. So, I figured I’d try to help out and share some of my favorite math-based gifts that me and my kids absolutely love. A couple of my choices may even surprise you!

Managing small group work when no other adults are around to assist can be a great challenge. Especially considering the vast differences in mathematical understandings educators are experiencing in the classroom this year. So how can small group work be structured to benefit all kids in the classroom no matter where they are in their understanding? The Build Math Minds Facebook group community delivered a ton of super helpful strategies to help answer that question and I wanted to share some of those in today’s podcast episode.

Thinking is an active and internal process that we should intentionally help our students learn how to share. In order to encourage our kids to share their thinking, we must consider how they (and we) listen, the types of questions we ask as teachers and they ask as students, how ideas are documented, and more. In today’s episode, I get into some amazing ideas about how to get students to share their thinking processes by Making Thinking Visible.

Having your work computer break down on you is one of the worst feelings in the world. Especially, if you forgot to back up all your data. I’ve been absent for a while because that is exactly what happened to me. In this week's episode, I talk about why I’ve been gone for a little bit and why it is of paramount importance to make sure all your digitally stored work is backed up.

I want all kids to have different strategies at their disposal to solve math problems.  However, the way our textbooks have us teach them to kids is overwhelming and confuses kids.  This episode is a clip from a webinar I did recently about The Missing Piece to Elementary Fact Fluency and part of the issue is that we are directly teaching kids so many strategies when instead we need to help kids develop them on their own.

If you want help with how to do that in your classroom, come join my online PD courses:

The Flexibility Formula K-2nd https://buildmathminds.com/flexibility-formula-prek-2nd/ 

The Flexibility Formula 3rd-5th https://buildmathminds.com/flexibility-formula-3rd-5th/ 

In this week’s podcast, we discuss a lot of different topics with Kelly Rogers, a 3rd grade teacher, who shares about building a love of math even during a pandemic. Go here to get links to resources mentioned: buildmathminds.com/115

Recently I did a video over on my vlog about A Big Mistake Educators Make When Building Math Fluency.  The mistake is that we directly teach students strategies.

Then I was looking through the book Putting Essential Understanding of Addition and Subtraction into Practice in PreK-Grade 2, I came across a section that described a lot of what I was trying to convey in my video just in a different way.

Now, I know this is from a PreK-Grade 2 book, but if you are an upper elementary teacher, as I read this section, think about how this applies to your situation.  Are you teaching multiplication or division in this same way??

Go to buildmathminds.com/114 to get links mentioned in this episode.