Remote Teaching Materials
Visual representations of mathematical concepts are crucial for student understanding. The videos and papers on this website show children in PK, K, and 1 using manipulatives and show students in grades 1 through 6 using math drawings for many math topics. When Covid resulted in many schools teaching remotely, I realized that teachers needed digital versions of these learning environments and remote teaching materials that could support children to move manipulatives and to draw and write. As in the classroom, the teacher needs to see what all children are making so that feedback is possible and the teacher can select examples to discuss with all children. Supporting teachers as much as possible to orchestrate a Nurturing Math Talk Community in the classroom, even when teaching remotely, is vital for student and teacher emotional and conceptual functioning.
Therefore, I worked with two experienced Math Expressions teachers and coaches, Robyn Decker and Shannon Kiebler, to make the Daily Routine and Quick Practices more accessible. They have worked with many districts supporting teachers in developing and using a Nurturing Math Talk Community in the classroom. We made colorful visual interactive sentence stems to increase the ease of use and comprehension of the mathematical aspects of the Daily Routines and Quick Practices. What did we make that you can use now?
The Quick Practices in all grades, Kindergarten through Grade 6, and the Daily Routines in Prekindergarten, Kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2, are crucial for building complex and central math concepts and for creating a sense of community as children engage in these practices together. We created digital slide decks in Google Slides for teachers to use in leading these Quick Practices and Daily Routines remotely. If teaching remotely, student leaders can lead these in the classroom if the teacher gives the link to the Quick Practices to particular students to be the student leaders and tells them what slide(s) to use. The student leader shares their screen and has the mic on so that all students can see and hear the student leader lead the Quick Practice or Daily Routine. These Google slides can also be used in the classroom, but there it is important to keep the Math Expressions posters for the Daily Routines visible in the classroom as anchor charts.
Students also need the special large Math Expressions MathBoards that contain specific grade-level learning supports and grade-level manipulatives, including the strategy/fluency cards. These manipulatives and cards can be given to students to use at home for remote teaching. But it is difficult for the teacher to see what a student is doing, and younger students require help with organizing and using the manipulatives. So, we also made the crucial grade-level manipulatives on Google Slide decks and made the Math Expressions MathBoards on Jamboards – a free app from Google that has a good writing function.
Practice materials are also important. I developed conceptual strategy/fluency cards that students can use individually to focus on the additions, subtractions, multiplications, and divisions with which they are not yet fluent. All of the conceptual strategy/fluency cards for Grades 1, 2, and 3 are available for online practice for teacher-led activities in the whole class and for individual student practice at home. There are also other fluency practice materials for Grades 2 and 3 online.
There are Pre-Kindergarten Teaching, Home Activities, and Daily Routine Google slide decks for teachers and parents. These can be used for pre-kindergarten children or to help kindergarten students catch up who did not have pre-kindergarten or are just not ready for kindergarten.
This is a research-based website that is for everyone, not just for users of Math Expressions. Anyone is welcome to use these remote teaching materials. And please visit other parts of my website, including the Teaching Progressions, which are 22 hours of visual and verbal explanations of the learning paths in the Common Core State Standards organized by math domain and using the research-based visual supports in Math Expressions.