Teaching isn’t for the faint of heart. And teaching math isn’t for the weak either! While I love teaching, I had to grow into loving teaching math. The math just wasn’t as fun as teaching science, or as sweet as my reading block. So, I set out to find teaching strategies for mathematics that made the subject more engaging for my students.
One of the teaching strategies for mathematics that I found was using math stations and that fundamentally shifted how my classroom ran. I teach all about the who, what, when, where, why, and how of starting math stations in your classroom. Check out the 5 part video series by leaving your email below. I’ll send you the links to the videos and you can watch them on your own time! Easiest PD ever!
Today, I’m sharing teaching strategies for mathematics that work for whole group lessons, which is where most of my teaching takes place. These instructional strategies for elementary math work for just about any grade. The standards you are teaching change, but these strategies can work for any grade level.
I’m excited to share with you 5 strategies for mathematics in this blog post and then I’ll be sharing 3 more in next week’s post which you can see here.
List of Instructional Strategies for Math
There are tons of teaching strategies for mathematics but the ones that I’m sharing come from Stanford. The Stanford University Graduate School of Education created these Principles for the Design of Mathematics Curricula. These strategies are meant to promote language and content development. You can read more in-depth about these teaching strategies for mathematics on this website.
These teaching strategies used in mathematics include:
- MLR1: Stronger and Clearer Each Time
- MLR2: Collect and Display
- MLR3: Critique, Correct, and Clarify
- MLR4: Information Gap
- MLR5: Co-Craft Questions and Problems
- MLR6: Three Reads
- MLR7: Compare and Connect
- MLR8: Discussion Supports
These mathematic language routines can be used with any topic or standards and work alongside the Common Core Mathematical Practices.
Teaching Strategies Used in Mathematics
Let’s dive into what these mathematical language routines do for your students and how they work in your classroom!
Stronger and Clearer Each Time
This first strategy is similar to writing a rough draft for a paper. The idea is that a response to a math question should improve as drafts do. As the teacher, you will press students to add more details and be more specific and more organized in their responses.
Some ways to make this happen include using quick writes, think-pair-share-edit, and trying to convince a skeptic. These teaching strategies for mathematics help students edit their work to make it stronger and clearer each time.
Sometimes in this strategy, I only have students do 1 revision. Sometimes this is a problem that we tackle throughout a unit. We will revise our thinking to a bigger problem and add on as we learn more standards.
Collect and Display
The next strategy is one that I was already using in my classroom! I love it when I’m ‘accidentally’ doing something that is research-based. Collect and Display is all about displaying strategies, vocabulary, and student work.
These displays can be math posters, anchor charts build with students, vocabulary word walls, and post-it notes with ideas and new learning. I like to change it up and display things in different ways.
I have a few blog posts all about creative math poster ideas, coordinate plane anchor chart inspiration, decimal in place value chart ideas, and ideas for math poster projects. Be sure to check out those posts if you are looking for ways to collect and display student learning.
Critique, Correct and Clarify
This next strategy for teaching math may sound the same as strategy number 1 above. But this one is more about using error analysis or critiquing and correcting an incomplete response.
The main way that I use this teaching strategy is by posting a wrong work/answer to a problem. Students then look at what the ‘mystery student’ did wrong and explain how to solve the problem correctly.
I’ve used these types of problems as a whole group discussion, warm-up questions, and even like task cards where I have a few errors posted around the room that students practice with. This can also be a good way to clarify misconceptions and address a common mistake that students did on a homework assignment or math exit ticket.
Teaching Strategeis for Mathematics: Information Gap
Using information gap as a teaching strategy can be a little tricky but it is so cool when it works! Students are paired up and have 2 different sets of information to solve a problem. They then work to determine what information they have, and what they still need, and then solve the shared problem.
For example, let’s take finding area and perimeter of rectangles. 1 student would have the length of the rectangle. The other student would have a side length. They could then work to find the area and the perimeter of the rectangle.
These can be more complex problems too. I like to use it when simplifying expressions and giving one student an expression with variables. The other student has what x equals to help the first student substitute in the variable.
If you want to increase the rigor of this teaching strategy, make the rule that students aren’t allowed to see each others’ cards. They then have to ask yes/no questions (like 20 questions) to see what information the other one has.
Co-Craft Questions and Problems
This is another strategy that I’ve used before realizing it was research-based! There are 2 sides to this strategy so it almost feels like a 2 in 1 strategy.
First, post an answer like 84 watermelons. Students then work to generate questions that would have your answer as the answer to the question they make. This makes for a great morning work activity or a quick activity to slide into that random pocket of 10 minutes that seems to happen every once in a while.
Second, this strategy works backward in that students create their own problems. Each student creates a problem and then solves it (usually on the back of the paper). Students then trade papers and solve each other’s problems, checking with the answer on the back. I like to use this activity toward the end of a unit and let students create a question based on anything in the unit.
More Teaching Strategies for Mathematics
Looking for more teaching strategies for mathematics? These blog posts and videos show even more ways to use these 5 strategies in math class.
- Top 9 Math Strategies for Successful Learning
- 4 Teacher-Recommended Instructional Strategies for Math
- 6 Simple but Effective Instructional Strategies for Mathematics
- Basic and Research-Based Effective Math Teaching Strategies
- 14 Strategies in Teaching Mathematics
I’d love to know what your favorite teaching strategies for mathematics are! Share your ideas in the comments!
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