Counting, Conjectures, and Claims

Last week I got to visit three wonderful schools in Michigan to think and learn with teachers about math talk, reasoning and number sense. We got to plan, teach and debrief together, which is one of my favorite ways of learning with a group of teachers! With one group of 3rd grade teachers, we decided to…

Count Around The Circle–Fraction Edition!

I just love counting routines. I've learned a tremendous amount about counting routines from Jessica Shumway's Number Sense Routines and the teachers featured in Elham Kazemi and Allison Hintz's Intentional Talk. (Several of these teachers are featured in videos you can view online for free. This one is my favorite!) Today I got to do a Count Around the Circle…

Math in Life Photo Series

The grocery store is one of my favorite places to think about math. Aron, my husband, has gotten used to me saying, "Oh, I've just got to take a picture of this!" on our weekly grocery shopping trips. Today I'm sharing a picture I took at the grocery store this week. This is the first photo…

Over or Under?: A Fraction Number Sense Routine

The first ten minutes of math workshop are often my favorite part of the day. This is a time when we use number sense routines to build math understanding and also to build communities in which students are talking about and playing with math. We try to make this time a time when every single…

Is There Room For Math That Isn’t Hard?

I want to share a question with you that has been clanking around my brain for a while. At first I wasn't even sure if I wanted or was even "allowed" to share and write about this question, but it's one I keep coming back to. It's a question that makes me feel somewhat vulnerable. And…

#ElemMathChat

I'm dusting off the ol' blog to share that I'll be hosting this week's #elemmathchat on Twitter this Thursday, December 11, 2014 at 9:00PM EST! I always find the #elemmathchats thoughtful, supportive and inspiring, so I hope you'll join us. The topic this week will be building mathematical communities, a topic near and dear to…

On Being a Mathematician

I've been thinking a lot about math communities, mindset, and how children define mathematics. I got the chance to write about some of these thoughts, and share some stories from a great 5th grade classroom in my blog post, "On Being a Mathematician," over at Stenhouse's Summer Blogstitute page. While you're there, check out all…