Mathematical Problem Solving: Mindsets Matter

Do you love math? Or are you convinced that the math train left the station without you long ago? No matter how you feel about it, if you're an elementary educator, you'll probably have to teach math at some point. Fortunately, growth mindset research and new findings about how the brain works are leading to some amazing insights about the best way to teach math. Furthermore, these insights are making it possible to foster a love of math in ALL students!

Last year I discovered Dr. Jo Boaler's book, Mathematical Mindsets, and I was fascinated by the research findings she shared. I also loved Dr. Boaler's strategies for using those research findings to improve math instruction. I know that problem solving is essential in mathematics, and most of the strategies I was using are supported by the new research. However, I did discover that a few of my teaching methods are not actually best practices, so I've been reworking those strategies to incorporate what I've learned.

A few years ago I presented a webinar called Math Problem Solving: Once a Day, the Easy Way, but after reading Mathematical Mindsets, I knew it was time to update that presentation with these new research-based practices. I asked Dr. Boaler for permission to include information and strategies from her book in my webinar, and she graciously agreed.

My new webinar is titled Math Problem Solving: Mindsets Matter to reflect the emphasis on growth mindset research and its implications for math instruction. To learn more, download the webinar note-taking handouts and take a look. The live webinar has ended, but you can sign up for the replay below. The replay of the August 31st webinar is free through September 10th.

Math Problem Solving - Mindsets Matter 

Click for the replay details.

Best Practices in Math Instruction: Agree or Disagree? 
At the beginning of the webinar, I'll ask you to evaluate 6 commonly-held beliefs about math instruction, and then I'll share what the research tells us about them. What do you think about each statement below? Do you agree or disagree with these beliefs about math instruction?

1. Problem solving strategies should be taught before giving students problems to solve. 
2. Drawing solutions and counting on fingers should only be encouraged for young children and struggling students. 
3. Students should only use calculators in math after they can perform the computations by hand.
4. Mistakes are only beneficial when we learn from them.  
5. Some people were born with a gift for math, and others weren’t. 
6. The best way to meet the needs of all students is through ability grouping and differentiation. 

If you want to know what the research says about these beliefs, watch the webinar replay! I dug into the best practices related to each of those statements about math instruction.

From Word Problems to Rich Math Tasks
One research finding about how to foster a mathematical mindset is pretty clear. Instead of overloading kids with traditional "word problems," we need to engage them in more in rich math tasks. In the webinar, I went into detail about what that means, but basically a rich math task encourages students to think about math in new ways, finding multiple ways to solve problems, and to discuss their findings with others. Fortunately, it's quite easy to find rich math tasks if you know where to look, and you can also turn traditional word problems into rich math task. Check out the webinar replay for tips about how find or create rich math tasks that are appropriate for your students.

Join Me for a Math Mindsets Webinar Journey!
I'm still learning about how to foster a mathematical mindset, so I consider this webinar to be more of a journey we'll take together. You can board the Math Problem Solving: Mindsets Matter webinar train here; tickets are FREE through September 10th, so hop on and take a seat now!

I'll be your conductor if you decide to take this journey with me, and I'll share what I've learned about growth mindset and math instruction. We'll wrap up our adventure by exploring painless problem solving strategies you can implement right away that will motivate your students to love math, even if you don’t! Who knows? By the end of our journey, you might be a math lover, too!

Teaching Order of Operations: No-fail Strategies that Really Work!

Order of operations can be frustrating to teach, but it doesn't have to be. There's no question that this is an extremely challenging topic for elementary students. Fortunately, there are loads of strategies for teaching order of operations that are both fun and effective.

One reason kids struggle with this concept is that there are so many rules to learn and follow. Even worse, rules that appear to be simple often prove to be deceptively complex.

For example, most kids can easily remember that multiplication and division are always performed before addition and subtraction, especially after they learn to follow the order described by "PEMDAS."

However, they tend to get stuck when an equation includes both multiplication AND division. Most kids automatically multiply before dividing, but order of operations tells us to perform the operation that comes first when reading the problem from left to right. No wonder kids find order of operations to be super confusing!

Another reason kids struggle is that even when they understand how to use order of operations correctly, they don't apply the rules systematically. Because the problems look easy, students try to rely on mental math alone to solve them. This may work with the easy problems, but mental math isn't effective with more complex problems that include multiple operations, parentheses, exponents.

After watching my students struggle with order of operations, I developed a simple lesson that worked every time. As a result, my students actually remembered the rules and could easily apply them to any problem. I'd like to share these no-fail strategies with you, along with two free order of operations printables you can use to help your students grasp these concepts.

Math Mindsets Matter: How Can Teachers Foster a Growth Mindset in Math?

Oh no! I've tumbled down into the rabbit hole of growth mindset research, never to be seen again! All kidding aside, the more I learn about growth mindset, the more fascinated I am with this topic, and the more I realize I have yet to learn.

But as fascinated as I am with growth mindset, I'm even more intrigued by the challenge of putting these research findings into practice. In other words...

How can we use the most current brain research to foster a growth mindset in our students... and in ourselves?

Mathematics is arguably the subject where mindset matters the most, especially when you consider how many adults have experienced math anxiety in the past. Take me, for instance. I always excelled in math, but I'll never forget the horrible experience I had with college calculus. I'll save that story for another time, but let me just say that it totally shredded my confidence about my ability to learn math!

Despite that experience (or maybe because of it), when I started teaching, I discovered that I have an aptitude for teaching math. I love breaking down complex math skills to make them easier for kids to understand, and I love using creative teaching methods to help all students succeed in math. Now that I'm no longer in the classroom, I enjoy presenting webinars where I can share these strategies with other educators.

Mind-blowing Brain Research About Mistakes and Mindsets 
During one of my recent math webinars, a teacher suggested that I read Jo Boaler's book, Mathematical Mindsets. I had already been planning to develop a webinar about how to foster a growth mindset in math, so I ordered a copy right away. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to read it when it arrived so the book ended up buried on my desk until I noticed it yesterday.

Oh my goodness! Have you ever read a professional development book that was so compelling you wanted to talk about it with anyone who would listen? That's how I felt when I started reading Mathematical Mindsets: Unleashing Students' Potential Through Creative Math, Inspiring Messages, and Innovative Teaching. I was hooked from the first page!

All I can say is the book is definitely living up to the premise of that very long title. I thought I had a good grasp on growth mindset research, but after reading just a few pages, I realized that I've barely scratched the surface of this topic.

For example, I knew that mistakes should be considered to be a sign of learning rather than as a sign of failure.

But I didn't know that when we make a mistake, our brain responds physically with increased electrical activity and actually grows a synapse! Neuroscientists discovered this by measuring this electrical brain activity in test subjects they observed while working. This brain response happens even when the person making the mistake doesn't consciously realize a mistake was made!

Ask One: An Easy Strategy to Instantly Elevate Your Group Work

Guest post by Jen from Beyond Traditional Math

I spent a ton of time avoiding group work in my early years of teaching. There were many reasons, but the main one was that I felt that students weren’t accountable. I’d be walking around and found them off task, disengaged, sitting back with their arms crossed, one or two would take over all of the talking…I felt that it was not a good use of my instructional time.

I began to work on those behaviors little by little by finding group work strategies. I knew the importance of student talk, so I was committed to the task. After trying different approaches, I developed a strategy that has become my most favorite by far.

I call the strategy “Ask One,” and you'll see why after you read how it works. It is by far and away the easiest and the most effective way I’ve found to elevate group work.

What you do is quite simple. You set up all your group work routines and get to know your students. You make sure that your classroom culture is one of kindness so that group work feels safe. Once you are seeing patterns like disengagement or struggle with specific students, rearrange your class into groups where you can place one of these students in each group. 

Then choose an activity that is engaging and difficult. I like Reasoning Puzzles because they really require students to dig in. This is what I like to say to the students before we begin: “I’m going to come around and ask your group to explain your thinking. The thing is, only one of you will be allowed to do the explaining, and I’m going to choose that person. The rest of you won’t be able to say a word to me. You won’t know who it is until I come to your group. If that person is having trouble explaining the work of the group, I’ll let you all continue to work and come back and check.”

Then, you watch your groups as they begin the activity. You’ll see who is struggling or who might be disengaged. When you ask that student to explain, they may not be able to fully explain everything. That’s when you start asking questions. Don’t let the other group mates jump in to explain! Tell them you’ll come back and that you expect the other group mates to help them understand the problem. 

As you leave, you’ll see behaviors where the group mates just try to tell them what to say. You’ll get around that by asking more questions to see if they understand conceptually. And you keep coming back…and you keep coming back…

I’ve done this dozens of times, and every single time the student that I’ve chosen is able to come to an understanding with the help of the group. The group mates that may have easily gotten an answer have to explain in many ways, and because of this they understand the concept a bit deeper themselves! If noticed that the student I questioned was getting anxious, I would  pull back and ask others to do the explaining. If that happened, it also would tell me that I definitely need to do some deep reteaching.

If you’d like to try out this strategy, you can download my free Reasoning Puzzles Sampler Set from my TpT store. Now you can see why “Ask One” is one of my favorite strategies for increasing engagement in math. It will instantly elevate your group work and make it more effective!

Jen is a math instructional coach and interventionist with 10 years of experience teaching elementary students. Her passion is teaching math with a focus on conceptual knowledge through rigorous problem solving. You can find more teaching tips and resources (and hear about how much she has learned from her mistakes) at her blog: Beyond Traditional Math. You can also connect with her on Pinterest, TpT, Twitter, and Facebook.

Math Problem Solving: Knowing Where to Begin

Teaching kids to how to solve math problems is a huge challenge, but often the biggest challenge is knowing where to begin instruction. Without administering some type of pretest, you risk boring your students with problems that are too easy or frustrating them with problems that may seem impossible.

Before you begin, you need to have some idea of their current problem solving skills. For example:

• How do they attack different types of problems? 
• What strategies do they use? 
• Are they functioning below grade level, at grade level, or above?
• If they struggle, is it due to poor computation skills, poor reading skills, or misconceptions about basic math concepts?  

The Problem with Problem Solving Pretests
Unfortunately, most math word problem pretests don't provide enough information to help us answer those questions, let alone know where to begin instruction. Many tests are so challenging that kids who've been out of school all summer are likely to give up after making a token effort to solve the first few problems. Also, most tests use a multiple choice format which makes them easy to grade, but not so easy to interpret. Students don't have a place next to each problem to show their work, so you're left guessing as to the reason they missed each incorrect answer.

Math is More Than a Numbers Game

Next Live Math Webinar - Sept. 5th
Click here to sign up!

Have you ever considered the importance of vocabulary instruction in math? If you think about it, success in math often hinges more on the ability to read and understand the language of mathematics than on the ability to perform mathematics computation. In other words ...

Math is more than a numbers game. 

Years ago, standardized tests consisted of page after page of computation, but today's math tests require students to read challenging word problems and understand precise mathematical terminology in order find  the solution. For example, upper elementary students who don't know the difference between factor and multiple or range and median are going to struggle to perform well on tests. Geometry is another area where accurate knowledge of the key vocabulary is closely tied to understanding of the essential concepts.

It's pretty clear that mastering the language of math is just as important as mastering math facts or being able to solve complex computational problems.

So what's the best way to teach math vocabulary? I can assure you that having kids is memorize words and definitions is NOT the way to go! Besides being extremely boring, rote memorization does not provide students with the opportunity to explore the complex nuances of meaning inherent in math terminology.

The good news is that the most powerful strategies for helping kids learn the language of math are also the most motivating and fun! Why? Because those methods encourage kids to TALK about math concepts and practice using the vocabulary correctly as they take part in hands-on activities and math strategy games.

Sweet Statistics: Jelly Bean Data Analysis

I used to think jelly bean math activities had no place in the upper elementary classroom. Sure, sorting jelly beans and graphing them by color is fun, but who has time for “fun” holiday activities when you have a rigorous curriculum to teach? But that was before I realized that you can do a whole lot more with jelly beans than just graph them! In fact, you can turn a fun candy-themed lesson into a powerful learning activity just by sneaking in some challenging academic content!

For example, the Jelly Bean Egg Challenge is a sweet statistics lesson that requires students to measure, estimate, collect, compile, and graph jelly bean data in order to analyze it and draw conclusions. Give each student a plastic egg filled with an assortment of jelly beans, and let the fun (and learning) begin!

Checking for Understanding with Exit Tickets

Guest post by Greg Coleman 
from Mr. Elementary Math

During my early years as a classroom teacher I felt that exit tickets were yet another initiative or showy thing to do. However, as the years progressed I came to realize the importance of exit tickets for both my students and myself as an educator.

As educators, it is essential that we check our students’ understanding along the way. Formative assessments help us to monitor student learning so that we can adjust our teaching practices to improve student success. Formative assessment can be verbal (i.e. students responding to questions), silent signals (i.e. thumbs up and thumbs down), or written (i.e. quick writes or journal writing). Exit tickets are one type of formative assessment educators can use to check for student understanding.

Depending on your purpose, exit tickets can assist you in determining ...

• what students already know about a topic 
• what students learned from a specific lesson
• what misconceptions individual students have about a specific skill or concept
• what next steps are required for individual students, groups of students, or the entire class

In this blog post, I will focus on written response exit tickets, especially as they might be used in mathematics instruction. However, many of the strategies can be applied to other subject areas as well.

If you are thinking, “How can I get started with exit tickets?”consider the following three questions:

• What do you want to find out about your students’ understanding at the conclusion of the lesson?
• How much time do you want to allocate for your students to complete the exit ticket?
• What format do you want to use for the exit ticket?

Show What You Know Board
One method that has worked well for me has been the Show What You Know Board. At the conclusion of a lesson students respond to a question by recording their answers on post it notes. Using post it notes makes the board reusable and efficient. The image below shows a picture of a board that I used after I taught a lesson on place value.

I wanted to find out whether the students could look at a base ten model, determine its value, and justify their thinking. The students were asked if they agreed or disagreed with the following statement, “Mike believes the model below the board represents the number 1,405. Do you agree or disagree? Explain why in writing or with a picture.” I would recommend having students put their initials at the bottom of their post it notes. This will help you identify which response belongs to which student.

A benefit of using the Show What You Know Board is the ability to see the responses of a group of students in one space. I always find this to be a very effective tool in the classroom because the students are required to take a position and explain their rationale behind it. Besides strategically planning a question that aligns with your learning goal, this method requires very little preparation after the initial setup.

Paper Exit Tickets (and a Freebie!)
Another effective strategy to check for understanding is to provide each student with a paper exit ticket. When creating effective paper exit tickets, I consider the following to be 3 critical components:

1. What does the student know? In this section students respond to a given question or statement. This is a place for students to show their work. 
2. What does the student think he/she knows? In this section students rate how well they understood the learning goal. This is a section for students to reflect on their own learning. 
3. What does the student’s work actually show? In this section the teacher takes notes on the student’s response. This is a place for teachers to reflect. Did the student meet the learning goal? Does this student have any misconceptions? Does the student’s perception of what he/ she knows match what he/she can do?

The image below shows an example of an exit ticket that I created using the 3 critical components.

I have discovered several major advantages to using this exit ticket format. First it helps to guide my understanding of student strengths and areas for growth. I can clearly see the misconceptions that individual students have with a concept or skill. In addition, these exit tickets are great for keeping track of student growth. If you would like to download the template for the Show What You Know Board and the sample exit ticket, click here.

Exit tickets are powerful tools that can be used to:

• drive discussions during student conferences
• assist with planning your small group instruction and/or centers
• provide parents with critical information during conferences
• provide a quick lesson closure

More Exit Ticket Formats
Take a look at some additional exit ticket formats that can be readily used in the classroom:

• Guess What I Learned? – Students write a brief note (2 – 3 sentences) to their parents explaining a concept they learned.
• Draw It & Record It – Students draw one or two concepts from a lesson. The students record 1 – 2 sentences explaining what they drew. 
• 3 - 2 - 1 - In a journal or on index cards, students record the following:

3 – things you learned 

2 – questions you still have 

1 – idea or thought that stuck with you

Although this process takes time, I challenge you to try using exit tickets at least 2 – 3 times each week. To make the transition easier, consider starting this process with one content area (ie. math ). As you become more comfortable add on other content areas. If you decide to use exit tickets in your classroom, notice the difference they make on how you deliver and modify instruction to meet the needs of your students.


Greg Coleman is a Kdg. – 5th Math Instructional Coach in Atlanta, Georgia. He loves to share math ideas and resources with elementary school teachers. You can find more ideas at his blog, Mr Elementary Math.

Teaching Division with Partial Quotients: Moving from Concrete to Abstract Models

Guest post by Tara, AKA The Math Maniac

When I started teaching I loved multiplication and hated division. My students felt the same way. When I started my career as a sixth grade teacher, almost half of my class had no idea how to divide. Worse, they had no idea what division was or when to use it. Of course division was not part of my curriculum and it was expected that my kids already knew it. I spent most of the year teaching and re-teaching the procedure for long division but it didn’t seem to do much good. As the school year came to a close, I knew I had to do something different. I started reading books and signed up for a class on multiplicative reasoning and that is when I was introduced to the idea of partial quotients.

The reason I love partial quotients is because they help me move kids from a visual model for division to an abstract one. That had been what was missing for my sixth graders. They had learned division facts using visual models and sharing and grouping strategies but had never connected that to bigger numbers. Instead, they had learned a procedure that had no connection to their definition of division. Partial quotients are a wonderful tool to move kids from what they already know about smaller number division and sharing things out to an efficient algorithm.

The best way to start with partial quotients is to start in context. I like to start with a problem like “Olivia, Mason and Connor made $153 shoveling snow. If they share the money equally, how much will each of them get?” Kids can use concrete manipulatives such as money pieces or base 10 pieces to solve the problem in a hands on way. It is a sharing context which kids are very familiar with. As kids share out the manipulatives, I record what they are doing using the partial quotients structure. If they start by giving each kid $40, and then give each kid $11 more, it is going to look like this.

Other kids will start out by sharing different numbers. Some kids will even share out ten at a time until all the tens are gone and then will share out the ones. Kids who are more fluent in multiplication, especially at the fact level will tend to share out bigger quantities than their classmates who are not yet comfortable. I record the process in a partial quotients format while kids share how they divided up the money. After several pairs have shared how they did it, I let other kids take the opportunity to come up and try to record their thinking.

We do several problems in this range in a similar format and before long, I have students recording their own thinking as they use the manipulatives to solve the problem. The second or third class period we spend on this, kids start making the transition to using just the partial quotients and not needing manipulatives. The key is that they can still visualize the manipulatives if need be, use what they know for multiplication facts and move to a more efficient and more abstract strategy. I also push this a bit by having kids show their partial quotients work and have the other kids explain how many they shared first and then how many they shared and so on. Take a look at this problem. Can you see how many manipulatives were shared initially and how many after that?

Since I have moved to teaching partial quotients, kids have a much better understanding of division. They connect it to what they already know about multiplication and division facts and are ready to tackle bigger problems in a short amount of time. They continue to connect division to sharing, are much more able to solve problems mentally and can get a reasonable estimate to a division problem. Since I learned partial quotients it has also increased my ability to do mental division and to see if my answer or my students’ answers make sense.

Take some time to learn more about partial quotients and to think about how they can move your students from a concrete model to an abstract one. Make math about making connections and not about learning procedures.

Tara, AKA The Math Maniac is a K-6 Math specialist. It is her mission in life to help kids and teachers learn to think about math and not just do it. 

Solve 'n Switch - Task Card Partner Fun!

Fun Freebie to Use with Math Task Cards!

Cooperative learning activities are often designed for teams of four students. However, sometimes a team is just too big, especially in math. Sometimes the perfect number of students for a practice activity is just two. Partners tend to cooperate more and argue less, and kids are usually more actively engaged when working with a partner as opposed to a large team.

With that in mind, I developed a new cooperative learning partner activity that I've named Solve 'n Switch. You can download it for free from my Math Stations page on Teaching Resources. Just add task cards that are appropriate for your unit of study, and you'll have an engaging and fun review activity!

In a nutshell, Solve 'n Switch includes these basic steps:

1. Each partner takes a task card from the top of the deck.
2. Simultaneously, they each solve the problem on their own card. 
3. Next, they switch task cards and solve the new problem.
4. Finally, they share, check, and discuss their answers. 
5. They repeat the steps with two new cards.

The free Solve 'n Switch packet includes three sets of directions so that you can modify it as needed. This activity is intended for practice and is not meant to be graded. After students play Solve ’n Switch, you can follow up with an independent assignment or quiz for assessment. I would not recommend allowing students to choose their own partners for this activity. Instead, I would plan out the partners in advance and pair students of similar abilities. If your class is set up in cooperative learning teams, you can split each team of four in half or pair students with someone from an entirely different team. You might even want to differentiate the activity by providing different sets of tasks cards for each pair according to their needs.

Where to Find Task Cards
If you need task cards for this activity, visit my Task Cards Pinterest Board. You'll find links to sets of task cards as well as games that include task cards that would work well with Solve 'n Switch. You'll also find posts with information about organizing and storing task cards.

What I love about Solve 'n Switch is that it's so versatile. You can use it in math centers, small groups, or even in a whole group setting with students divided into pairs. All you really need is a set of task cards and either dry erase boards and markers or the recording pages in the packet. Have fun with this!

Order of Operations Bingo and a Freebie

Looking for my Order of Operations freebie? I've deactivated the original post that included this freebie, but these two pages are still free in a more recent post. Click over to Teaching Order of Operations: No-Fail Strategies That Work to find a step-by-step order of operations lesson and these free printables!

Hands-on Geometry - Part I

Guest Blog post by Stephanie Moorman of Teaching in Room 6

Measurement and geometry standards span all grade levels. Because of this repeated exposure, you would think that the students would grasp the concepts easily.  However, that just isn’t so. Identifying various polygons and solid shapes, breaking them down into their basic lines and angles, discovering the perimeter and area of a shape is sometimes tricky for the students.  Especially when most of the time the work the students are doing is from a text book.

In an effort to help my students more clearly grasp the Measurement and Geometry standards, I have tried hard to break away from the book and use hands-on strategies to introduce and reinforce concepts.  Here are a few of the activities and lessons I have done in the past to teach my students measurement and geometry. Next week in Part II of this blog post, I'll share a few more.

Polygons
Identifying various two-dimensional shapes can be rather boring when simply looking in a book.  One thing I have done to get my students more actively involved in their learning is to break out my trusty stack of magazines.

The students divide their paper into 5 columns, one for each of the basic polygons we are learning.  If you are learning more (ie: equilateral triangle, scalene, isosceles  or the various different types of quadrilaterals) just divide your paper into the appropriate amount of columns.  At the top of the page, I have the students draw the regular polygon and we list the attributes.  Then, they are off.  The students search the magazine for pictures of the polygons, cut them out, and glue them under the proper column heading.

Solid Figures
Once the students enter into the realm of three-dimensional solid figures, using the book definitely doesn’t cut it.  So there are several things I do to get the kids thinking, and learning, about solid figures.

I always introduce the figures with pictures.  We look at plain, generic solids, and I ask the students to tell me objects they have seen that would match those shapes.  Kids always mention things like ice cream cones for the cone shape, soda can for a cylinder, dice for a cube, a pyramid for a square pyramid, and a book for a rectangular prism.  I then have them go home that night and search for actual objects that would fit into the categories.  They write down all the objects they can, and bring one of their choice in.  The next day, we all categorize the found objects.You can download this chart by clicking on the image; the chart is page 2 of the freebie which includes a worksheet for next week's activity, too.

Food is always a hit with the students.  Actually creating solid figures out of marshmallows and toothpicks is a wonderful way to get the kids thinking.  We discuss the vertices, edges, and faces for each solid figure, and the students set about building them.

Nets of Solids
Using the marshmallow figures described above, I have the students deconstruct them and create the nets.  This is VERY difficult for them, mostly because once you take some of the toothpicks out of the marshmallows, there are edges missing!  The students need to figure out that they have to add the toothpicks and marshmallows to create the whole.  It is interesting to see who gets this concept.

Another thing I have done with nets is to give the students a piece of paper and let them create the nets.  Kids must figure out that the circles on a cylinder must be the same diameter as the length of the rectangle.  They need to use all of the same size squares for a cube.  Everything needs to be very precise or it just won’t work!

Angles and Lines
I am big on kinesthetic learning. Because of this, I have a lot of motions and gestures instilled in my teaching of concepts to help the kids better understand.  When it comes to angles, we get moving a lot!  Using their arms, I have the students show me each type of angle and line as best they can.  The kids really get into it!  When I say “parallel lines”, their arms always move up over their heads in two straight lines.  When I say “ray”, their arm extends out and they point off in one direction.  An “obtuse angle” has two arms, one extended out straight from their body and the other at a large angle.  The kids LOVE moving around, and it really helps them remember all of the different angles and lines.

So there you have it!  These are some simple ways to get your kids actively involved in learning the Measurement and Geometry standards.  There are SO many more ways to have a hands-on experience with these standards, and I'll be share a few more with you next week. I'll also be including a Hands-on Geometry freebie for you to customize!  If you have ideas to share, please leave a comment and let us all know!

Stephanie Moorman is a 5th grade teacher who has been teaching elementary school for 14 years. She has her Masters in Education and is Nationally Board Certified. She is the creator of the Teaching in Room 6 blog where she enjoys sharing her strategies with others.

8 Strategies to Motivate Kids to Love Problem Solving

Students often fear math, and are especially intimidated by problem solving. These feelings prevent them from being able to relax, think clearly, and apply what they've learned to problems they're trying to solve. The resulting brain freeze serves to reinforce the idea that mathematics is scary and difficult. Math standards keep getting tougher, and students are expected to be proficient at solving complex problems far beyond what we were expected to solve at their age. How are we to help our students become confident problem solvers when math continues to get more challenging?

Strategies to Thaw Math Brain Freeze
Fortunately, there are many tools and  strategies you can use to show your kids that math isn't all that scary after all. Here are 8 strategies that helped my students feel more comfortable with problem solving. These techniques thawed their attitudes towards math and motivated them to actually enjoy problem solving!

1. Implement a problem-solving program in which students solve just one word problem a day, and start with easy problems they can ALL solve without difficulty 
2. Mix up the types of problems and present challenges that require different problem solving skills and strategies. This will require your students to tap into different types of math content and skills to solve them. 
3. Keep problem solving sessions short at first - no more than 10 to 15 minutes a day - but as students start to look forward to these sessions, you can include longer problems that require more persistence
4. Refer to word problems as "puzzlers," "brain teasers," or "stumpers," and present them as fun challenges rather than dreaded math problems
5. Alternate cooperative learning strategies with independent work to add an element of fun while ensuring individual accountability
6. Allow students to use calculators during problem-solving sessions
7. Require students to show their work with pictures, symbols, or words, but don't require them to write complete sentence explanations for every problem they solve.
8. After giving students time to solve a problem, reveal the correct answer up front and then spend the remaining time asking students to share strategies. Ask, "How many different ways can we discover to solve this problem?" Call on several student volunteers to come to the front of the class, one at a time, to demonstrate how they solved the problem. This will highlight the variety of different ways a problem can be solved. 

Daily Math Problem Solving and Growth Mindset
I've had great success with these strategies, and when I've shared them with teachers, they have experienced similar results. They've told me that their students now look forward to their daily problem solving sessions! In the same way that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, it seems that a problem a day keeps the brain freeze away!

August 2017 Update - I'm in the process of updating the Daily Math Puzzler program to align it with best practices for fostering a growth mindset. On August 31st, I'm presenting a webinar called Math Problem Solving: Mindsets Matter, and I'll dive into recent research on this topic and bust some math myths about problem solving. If you miss it, you can purchase the professional development version of this webinar from my TpT store here.

Problem Solving Assessment Freebie
One of the free files I share during the webinar is my Problem Solving Assessment pack which can help you evaluate your students' problem-solving abilities. It includes both a pretest and a posttest on 4 different levels. Believe me, you'll learn a lot about how your students solve problems when you score their tests! If you don't have time to watch the webinar now, sign up HERE if you'd like a copy of this freebie sent to you by email.

What are some of your favorite strategies and tips for helping kids to thaw out math brain freeze and enjoy solving problems?