IgnitED

Teaching students to understand how to convert a fraction to decimals seems like an impossible task to many 6th and 7th grade math teachers. Math teachers in elementary school usually teach students using fraction wheels for fractions and decimals grids for for decimals, however I have never seen them apply fraction concepts to decimal grids. This seems to be where their understanding of decimals reaches its end point. When I … Read More →

I absolutely love teaching fractions! It just makes sense to me, but I realize that I am in the minority when it comes to teaching fractions. I have taught elementary and middle school math and one common issue that many of the students have is understanding the role of the denominator. I have learned that  students cannot have a real conceptual understanding of fractions until they understand the role of … Read More →

The last 9 weeks of school is always my favorite part of the school year because standardized testing is over and most of the curriculum has been taught. This is my time for reviewing concepts that were not mastered and maybe finding a different way to teach a particular skill or concept. I have been teaching my current 1st grade class for about 2 months. When I started in December … Read More →

Before I left Louisiana I was apart of a LSU Cain Center collaborative called the Math and Science Project. The math and science project’s goal was to build elementary teacher’s math and science content knowledge. I learned so much from this collaboration but there was one thing that always stuck with me,  the article  13 Rules that Expire. This article highlighted on all the rules that were taught  to us … Read More →

I write the math lesson plans for my grade level and on Monday I will begin teaching my 1st grade students how to identify whether or not a number is 10 more or 10 less. While talking to my co-worker yesterday about this skill I showed her an example of the number bond of 23 and 33. Her concern was that she understood the number bond and 10 more or … Read More →

I was listening to the Tom Joyner Morning Show while I was on my way to work last week and Sherri Shepherd (former host of The View) was on the show talking about her son and school. She first began talking about how her son was growing up and then the topic turned  into a conversation about this “new math” or the Common Core Math. Sherri was saying how the … Read More →

Last weekend I was looking ahead at the math skills that I had to teach my 3rd graders and based on what I saw I had to teach them how recognize that multiplication and division were inverses of one another. So, yesterday I was teaching teaching my students how to subtract 2 digit numbers with regrouping using a place value chart while teaching my lesson I had an AHA! moment. … Read More →