New ways to teach Math that could benefit your students

Hechinger Report recently published a story titled: “The fantastic new ways to teach math that most schools aren’t even using”. The article actually had 4 small changes that can be taught to students to help them really improve their math scores.

Here is a summary of the 4 tips:

1. Ask students “why” at least once every day. Why did that strategy work? Why does that strategy make sense? Why would this work for all numbers?

2. Instead of looking only for whether a student’s answer was right or wrong, focus on what was right in the student’s work. Then build on what the student did understand in your next discussion and next task.

3. Use your textbook as a tool. Find meaningful tasks in the materials — or tasks that could be meaningful and accessible for students with small changes in numbers or contexts.

4. Provide at least one opportunity each day for students to solve and explain problems mentally (without pencils, paper, calculators, or computers). This promotes students’ sensemaking, creativity and, most importantly, their sense that they are mathematicians.

For Counselors, these are definitely tips that should be shared with educators and students in your schools. Many students have grown up depending on their calculators to do all their math. These are some good tips to get them thinking rather than just punching numbers into their computer or calculator.

Here is a link to the article: The fantastic new ways to teach math that most schools aren’t even using