Diagnosing a child with a learning disability should never be done via something you learn in a podcast.  

So many people ask me about dyscalculia.  I’m not an expert on this, but someone I’m learning from is Ronit Bird.

The research around dyscalculia is still so new, and in the book, she says that estimates say around 4-6% of the population have dyscalculia, which equates to around 1 child in an average classroom.

To help you a bit more to decide if a struggling kiddo has dyscalculia (and should be tested), Ronit gives a list of indicators that I’m sharing in this podcast.

Go over to buildmathminds.com/84 to get the link to purchase the book.

Welcome fellow Recovering Traditionalists to Episode 83.  Today we are looking at Inspection-Worthy Mistakes.

When I was in school, math mistakes were met with a big ‘ol red mark and nothing more.  Did I learn anything from those red marks?  I learned it was a wrong answer.  But wrong answers can be a great jumping off point to help students learn so much more than that.

However, you don’t want to stop & do a whole group discussion every time you see a student with a wrong answer, so when should you? 

In this week’s podcast, I’m sharing a few ideas from the article Inspection-Worthy Mistakes by Angela T. Barlow, et al.

Get links over at buildmathminds.com/83

Welcome fellow Recovering Traditionalists to Episode 82.  Today we are looking at how to have Hands-Down Conversations.

How many of you were expected to raise your hand before you spoke in school?  I did.  Even my own kids do now in their classrooms.  I know this not because I’m in class with them but at the dinner table we will be having a conversation and one of them will raise their hand for a turn to speak.  

When I was in the classroom, I had students raise their hands to speak because classroom conversations can get out of hand and unruly very quickly.  So I was intrigued when I saw the book Hands Down Speak Out: Listening and Talking Across Literacy and Math K-5 by Kassia Omohundro Wedekind and Christy Hermann Thompson. Go to buildmathminds.com/82 to get links mentioned in this episode and a discount code for the book.

Welcome fellow Recovering Traditionalists to Episode 81.  Today we are looking at how to help kids get away from that feeling of “I’m Just Bad at Math!”

The book I’m Just Bad at Math! by Allison Gray is a short chapter book about a girl, Lucy, who wants to be good at math but is struggling. This book is a great read aloud to address the issue that some of your kiddos are thinking they are just bad at math.  It can be a great kickoff to a Growth Mindset investigation and how in your classroom you will be helping them change their thinking about their math abilities.  I’ll link to the book over at buildmathminds.com/81

Welcome fellow Recovering Traditionalists to Episode 80.  Today we are taking a look at The 5 Strands of Mathematical Proficiency.

It’s the time of year that educators start thinking and worrying about the end of the year tests.  Yes those are still a ways off but we start to wonder if we are going to have time to prepare students enough with the time we have left.

I want to encourage you to keep these 5 Strands of Mathematical Proficiency in mind.  Get all the info here: buildmathminds.com/70

Welcome fellow Recovering Traditionalists to Episode 79.  Today is all about How Can I Help?

You may or may not have noticed but I took a break from doing these podcasts.  I can blame the craziness of 2020 and navigating this time with 4 young kids but really the reason I wasn’t creating this podcast was because I didn’t think I could be of any help.  In this episode, I’m sharing why I’m restarting the podcast and how I can be of help.

Welcome fellow Recovering Traditionalists to Episode 78.  Today we are talking about Looking for the CAN DOs in Math.

In today’s episode you get to listen in on a conversation I got to have with an alumni of my online course, Amy Warren.  Amy is an elementary special education teacher.  We discuss all kinds of topics from looking for the things kids CAN DO to how to do assessments with young kids, even if you are doing virtual school.  Go to buildmathminds.com/78 to get links to everything we mention in this episode.

Welcome fellow Recovering Traditionalists to Episode 77.  Today we are taking a look at Predicting Later Academic Success.

In this episode, I’m sharing a very research heavy article, but it is worth the read.  School Readiness and Later Achievement by Duncan, et al provides such an interesting observation through their meta-analysis of data sets that looked at school readiness (school-entry academic, attention, and socioemotional skills) and later academic success in reading and math.  I’m linking up the article over at buildmathminds.com/77

What’s so interesting about the findings from this article is that the strongest predictors of later academic success are school-entry math, reading, and attention skills. And early math skills have the greatest predictive power, followed by reading and then the attention skills. 

Welcome fellow Recovering Traditionalists to Episode 76.  Today we are taking a look at tips for Creating Images for Subitizing.

The first time I was introduced to Subitizing was in the article Subitizing: What Is It? Why Teach It? By Douglas Clements.  The article was published in 1999, but one thing I discovered through that article was even though the term was fairly new, there had been research done around it from as far back as 1912!  Still today we have lots of elementary educators who don’t know what Subitizing is, why it’s important, or how to teach it.

If you aren’t sure what Subitizing is, then pause this video and go download the article.  I’ll link to it over at buildmathminds.com/76 and then you can come back and listen to the rest of this episode because what I’d like to chat about today is some advice on how to actually create images to use for subitizing activities.

Welcome fellow Recovering Traditionalists to Episode 75.  Today we are taking a look at how Counting is a Substitute for Sense Making.

“To encourage counting can actually interfere with the construction of number in that it is a rote process that may be devoid of any mathematical meaning.”

When I read that sentence on page 15 of the book Coming to Know Number by Wheatley & Reynolds, my first instinct was to slam the book shut.  My shoulders immediately clenched up and I thought ‘How in the world can they say that!?!?  Counting and our number system is the basis for all mathematical ideas.’

In today’s episode I talk about what the book continues on to say and how my shoulders started to relax.  Get all the details from today’s episode over at buildmathminds.com/75