Students love math games and puzzles, but how much are they really learning from the experience? Too often, math games are thought of as just a fun activity or enrichment opportunity. Well Played shows you how to make games and puzzles an integral learning component that provides teachers with unique access to student thinking. The twenty-five games and puzzles in Well Played, which have all been field-tested in diverse classrooms, contain: explanations of the mathematical importance of each game or puzzle and how it supports student learning; variations for each game or puzzle to address a range of learning levels and styles clear step-by-step directions; and classroom vignettes that model how best to introduce the featured game or puzzle. The book also includes a separate chapter with suggestions for how to effectively manage games and puzzles in diverse classrooms; reproducibles that provide directions, game boards, game cards, and puzzles; assessment ideas; and suggestions for online games, puzzles, and apps. Well Played will help you tap the power of games and puzzles to engage students in sustained and productive mathematical thinking.

For years, students have been taught to cross multiply when presented with proportion problems. Few understood what they were doing or why they were doing it. Rarely were students invited to think about various representations to determine the relationship between the two ratios being compared. The ideas and activities in this guide will help you provide students with the conceptual understanding of ratios and proportional thinking that is essential for solving real-world problems and achieving success in higher-level mathematics. It's All Relative includes more than thirty modules, which are aligned to specific Common Core State Standards. Each module in this accessible, spiral-bound flipchart addresses specific mathematical practices and common misconceptions; features timely classroom examples; includes proven, ready-to-use activities; and provides ideas for adapting activities to meet the needs of individual learners. The authors particularly emphasise how to use visual models tables, tape diagrams, graphs, and double number lines to represent ratios and proportional thinking. These visual models, which may be new to many teachers, enhance students' conceptual understanding and improve their ability to solve a wide range of proportional reasoning problems.

To help students communicate their mathematical thinking, many teachers have created classrooms where math talk has become a successful and joyful instructional practice. Building on that success, the ideas in Why Write in Math Class? help students construct, explore, represent, refine, connect, and reflect on mathematical ideas. Writing also provides teachers with a window into each student's thinking and informs instructional decisions.Focusing on five types of writing in math (exploratory, explanatory, argumentative, creative, and reflective), Why Write in Math Class? offers a variety of ways to integrate writing into the math class. The ideas in this book will help you make connections to what you already know about the teaching of writing within literacy instruction and build on what you've learned about the development of classroom communities that support math talk.The authors offer practical advice about how to support writing in math, as well as many specific examples of writing prompts and tasks that require high-cognitive demand. Extensive stories and samples of student work from K-5 classrooms give a vision of how writing in math class can successfully unfold.

Table of Contents

1: Introduction; 2: Developing a Community of Math Writers; 3: Learning the Language of Mathematics; 4: Writing to Explore; 5: Writing to Describe and Explain; 6: Writing to Justify and Convince; 7: Writing to Connect Mathematics and Creativity; 8: Writing to Reflect

When you talk with students about their number sense and computational skills, you're bound to uncover some surprising gaps in their understanding. Knowing how to identify and bridge those gaps is essential for helping students at all levels advance as mathematical thinkers. The Zeroing in on Number and Operations series, which aligns with the Common Core State Standards and the NCTM Sandards and Focal Points, features easy-to-use tools for teaching key concepts in number and operations and for addressing common misconceptions. Sharing the insights they've gained through decades of mathematics teaching and research, Anne Collins and Linda Dacey help you focus on what students really need to know and understand at each grade level. The 30 modules in the grades 5 and 6 flipchart are designed to engage all students in mathematical learning that develops conceptual understanding, addresses common misconceptions, and builds key ideas essential to future learning. The modules are organized into three sections: Whole Numbers and Operations; Fractions; and Decimals. Each module begins with the identification of its Mathematical Focus and the Potential Challenges and Misconceptions associated with those ideas. In the Classroom then suggests instructional strategies and specific activities to implement with your students. A section on Meeting Individual Needs offers ideas for adjusting the activities to reach a broader range of learners. Each activity is supported by a reproducible, and References/Further Reading provides resources for enriching your knowledge of the topic and for gathering more ideas. At grades 5 and 6, the authors focus on the key ideas that are essential at these levels: Place value to billions and thousandths Divisibility rules Division with single and multidigit divisors Order of operations to include parentheses Multiples and factors to include least common multiple and greatest common factors Rational numbers including equivalence between and among fractions and decimals Fraction as ratio including the difference between an additive and multiplicative relation Operations on rational numbers