Best Practices for Teaching Math Grades 1-3

As a rotary primary math teacher, one of the most useful tools I have ever used is the hundreds chart.  From 1st to 3rd grade, these charts have helped my students to develop number sense and an understanding of basic math concepts such as counting, skip counting, addition and subtraction, multiplication, patterns and number relationships. A hundreds chart is a grid of numbers from 1 to 100, usually arranged in 10 rows and 10 columns, ranging from 1-100.  I would paste a blank hundreds chart and one with numbers on, back to back, on cardstock and then laminate them, keeping them in a basket for easy access with whiteboard markers.  For my 2nd and 3rd graders, we also kept baskets of charts from 1-120 and 101-200.   Here are some ways you can use a 100's chart to support student learning: Counting and number recognition :  Use the chart to help students count and recognize numbers up to 100. Have students point to each number as they count aloud, or call out...

MATH TALK is an essential part of teaching math in the primary grades. Math talk involves students explaining their mathematical thinking, listening to their classmates' ideas, and discussing math concepts collaboratively. Learning to explain their thinking helps children develop the skills they will need for more difficult concepts in the junior grades.  Here are some TIPS  for promoting math talk in your classroom: Encourage students to explain their reasoning :  Encourage students to explain how they arrived at a particular answer, even if it is incorrect. This will help them to understand their mistakes and to learn from them.  Often as a child is in the process of explaining, they will realize an error and self-correct on their own.   Create a safe and respectful environment :  Create an environment where students feel comfortable sharing their ideas without fear of ridicule or judgement. Make sure to emphasize that there are many ways to approac...

You're standing up at the board, writing a math question.  When you ask for the answer, the brighter students will try to answer.  The rest of the class just sits there...unengaged, feeling lost because they couldn't figure out the answer fast enough or at all.  Your top students are doing just fine.  But what about the others?  How do we get them to participate? In my Grade 1 class, we use to start the day out with the "agenda" activity.  Two students would pick up agendas.  We would then count each pile and make a number sentence, for example, 13 + 12 = 25 agendas.  Then we would take turns breaking those numbers down to make longer number sentences.  It went something like this: 13 + 12 = 25 10 + 3 + 10 + 2 = 25 5 + 5 + 3 + 10 + 1 + 1 = 25 2 + 3 + 5 + 3 + 7 + 1 + 1 = 25 And so on.  As the numbers got smaller, more students would join in because they could work at that level.  By the end of the activity, everyone is engaged - if n...

Hello again! The math curriculum, over the years, has been sadly neglectful in communicating to the teacher what exactly it is about.  The little professional development available was usually done by having a "lead" math teacher who went to the meetings to learn about the curriculum and then return to school and SHARE what he or she learned with the staff.  As the lead math teacher at our school, I can say that it was not very effective. So, now we have another NEW curriculum.  Are we better off?  Does it explain how to teach the math concepts?  It seems to be more descriptive than the 2005 curriculum in that it provides "key concepts" and, in some cases, gives examples.  But that really depends on the strand.  I find that the Data strand is more informative and helpful than, say, the Number strand.  For example, when teaching division in Grade 2, using a number line is suggested as a "repeated subtraction" strategy.  It works, of course, i...

Hello!  My name is Rosemary and I am a retired primary teacher.  I will be writing the math portion of our blogs.  I hold specialist qualifications in Primary/Junior math and in Primary Education .  During my career, I participated in a variety of math-related professional development activities including giving workshops at the board level, attending a week-long seminar on teaching geometry with the MOE, representing our board at a provincial ETFO seminar and participating on the committee to choose a math program for our board.  I have taught grade 3 math for a number of years and participated in EQAO with stellar results.  Now that I am retired, I am writing math resources, aligned with the new Ontario Math Curriculum 2020 for the primary grades on Teachers Pay Teachers.  These include guided teaching slides , student worksheets and answer pages .  I am a firm believer in hands-on, constructivist-type math activities for students along with m...