Journey To Becoming a Better Math Teacher

From the desk of Carol C…

I have always enjoyed teaching math.  There are clear systems to use, right and wrong answers, and constants.  Algorithms are wonderful.  Math:  teach by using the textbook exclusively,  hand out worksheets that are correlated to the pages studied, and teach what a few key words found in story problems mean.  Who wouldn’t like it, right?

Well, I became bored with this way of teaching.  I began to dread math class.  Most of my kids dreaded it, too.  Also, I realized that the only way I was helping kids who didn’t understand an algorithm was to drill it over and over.  Not really too helpful.  I knew I had to change something!  Thus began my journey to becoming a better math teacher.

My road began years ago at a 2 week-long staff development training on teaching gifted children.  I was lucky enough to land in a math class with a dynamite teacher.  She conducted the workshop as she did her classroom back in Maine.  Every day I, along with a multitude of others, couldn’t wait to attend her class.  It was here that I began to expand my understanding of number sense…that math involved more than knowing the digits 0-9 and the algorithms associated with them.  How did all of this happen?

• No question was met with some sense of disbelief.  We all think we teach this way, but the majority of us do not.  The teacher reinforced questioning by telling us “Good.  You went back to the place where your understanding broke down.  This is the most important part of learning.”  Who wouldn’t want to ask a question?
• She gave us (required us to seize) the opportunity to explore concepts on our own or in groups.
• This teacher made math enticing because every step of the way she made sure that we had a clear understanding of what she was teaching.  Every day we knew that we would learn something that we hadn’t known or gain a deeper understanding of a math concept. That was exciting even to a person like me who had never liked learning math.  I knew my class would react the same way I did if they were in a class like this one.

Several years after the staff development, I attended a writing conference where of all places, I found a book in the college bookstore on teaching math.  It looked promising.  I bought it and concentrated on understanding the author’s, Nancy Litton’s, view of how to teach math.  She emphasized understanding how and why math systems work.  Her approach was to dig deeply into a few concepts at a time rather than teaching many and scratching the surface.  What did I learn from Nancy Litton?

• Don’t try to go further with a child in math until he or she understands place value.  This is essential to understanding our number system and how it works.  How true!
• The best way to teach math is to teach the algorithm last.  Learn to break numbers apart so they are easier to work with.  For instance in 2nd grade to add 67+39 you might say 60+30 is 90 and 7+9 is 16.  90+10+6=106.  It’s amazing how quickly many kids can use this method or another one in their heads and arrive at the correct answer.  While the kids were breaking these numbers apart, I was carrying, borrowing, regrouping, or something in my head…in other words using the algorithm.  I was much slower arriving at the correct answer.
• Take the time to let kids explain how they arrived at their answers right or wrong.  This helps all of them see the common mistakes made and find different ways to solve a problem.  The thinking behind a solution is what’s really important.
• Kids learn by doing.  Games, projects, and real life activities increase math comprehension, reinforce what has been learned, and give a practical application to why we are learning what we are learning.
• Use other resources that zero in on what we need help teaching.

Most recently I enlisted my peers to give me advice and share material they found helpful.  What a difference this made!  Furthermore, I was lucky enough to have a curriculum coordinator who led the staff in learning how to differentiate math in a regular classroom.  He gave lots of great ideas about how to meet the needs of all kids while keeping it manageable for the teacher.  But what he did that changed my teaching the most was introducing the staff to the book Good Questions for Math Teaching: Why Ask Them and What to Ask.  Not only did this book give me some specific questions to ask my class, it gave me the framework to develop deeper questions of my own.  Talk about rigor!  High level questions require students to fully explain their answers thus, allowing the teacher to assess students’ understanding of the material.  Good questions don’t allow us to accept the answer “I just know how to do it.”  This is the Common Core in action.

I didn’t embrace the “new way” of teaching math all at once.  It came in pieces.  The first step that I would encourage you to take is to increase your own understanding of math.  Then I would work on raising my level of questioning.  Pushing kids to find out how and why numbers work only increases their grasp of the material.  It, also, continually lays the foundation for the next level of understanding.  Branch out.  Find great resources.  Since I started on my math journey, I’ve never looked back.