Topic: Rozlynn Dance

There is a pervasive belief in our culture that being good at math is an innate ability. As teachers, we need to reinforce a growth mindset in our students. Here's where you can start...

As teachers, we must cultivate the structures and beliefs in a classroom community that lay the foundation for the mathematical growth of our students. Our foundation is built on a set of nine key beliefs.

Teaching elementary school math can be unpredictable and challenging, but you're not alone. Here are a few tips and tricks that keep us going when the going gets tough!

Today on the Heinemann podcast: how do we create strong learning communities where students can feel confident in their mathematical abilities? In their new book Thinking Together: 9 Beliefs for Building a Mathematical Community, Rozlynn Dance and Tessa Kaplan celebrate student-centered strategies that empower students to take risks, ask questions, and grow as learners.

Once students are comfortable with the idea that mistakes are great, it is important that they begin to notice them on their own. As with self-correcting while reading, we want our students to notice when they are making a mistake and make attempts to remedy it.

At the beginning of the school year, one of the most important things we do as teachers is get to know our children. It is during this “get to know you” time that we can easily learn about our students’ confidence levels.

One of the most important factors in successful student-centered instruction and learning is perseverance. If we let our students give up after the first try or get overly frustrated when they make a mistake, we are doing them a great disservice.

To help build a community of mathematical growth in every classroom, we've created a set of posters based on the nine key beliefs outlined in Thinking Together.

In order for students to learn and understand mathematical concepts, they must live in classrooms that support cooperative learning and mathematical discourse. Students develop an understanding of mathematics when in an atmosphere where they feel safe to learn, take risks, make mistakes, and grow.

Teaching questioning skills is not an easy process. It involves patience, scaffolding, and focused instruction. Asking a question is not something that a lot of our students know how to do innately, especially at the primary level.