Empower your students as they reimagine the world around them through mathematics Culturally relevant mathematics teaching engages and empowers students, helping them learn and understand math more deeply and make connections to themselves, their communities, and the world around them. The mathematics task provides opportunities for a direct pathway to this goal; however, how can you find, adapt, and implement math tasks that build powerful learners? Engaging in Culturally Relevant Math Tasks helps teachers to design and refine inspiring mathematics learning experiences driven by the kind of high-quality and culturally relevant mathematics tasks that connect students to their world. With the goal of inspiring all students to see themselves as doers of mathematics, this book provides intensive, in-the-moment guidance and practical classroom tools that empower educators to shape culturally relevant experiences while systematically building tasks that are standards-based. It includes A pathway for moving through the process of asking, imagining, planning, creating, and improving culturally relevant math tasks. Tools and strategies for designing culturally relevant math tasks that preservice, novice, and veteran teachers can use to grow their practice day by day. Research-based teaching practices seen through the lens of culturally relevant instruction that help students develop deep conceptual understanding, procedural knowledge, fluency, and application in all K-5 mathematical content. Examples, milestones, opportunities for reflection, and discussion questions guide educators to strengthen their classroom practices, and to reimagine math instruction in response. This book is for any educator who wants to teach mathematics in a more authentic, inclusive, and meaningful way, and it is especially beneficial for teachers whose students are culturally different from them.

Detailed plans for helping elementary students experience deep mathematical learning Do you work tirelessly to make your math lessons meaningful, challenging, accessible, and engaging? Do you spend hours you don’t have searching for, adapting, and creating tasks to provide rich experiences for your students that supplement your mathematics curriculum? Help has arrived! Classroom Ready-Rich Math Tasks for Grades 4-5 details more than 50 research- and standards-aligned, high-cognitive-demand tasks that will have your students doing deep-problem-based learning. These ready-to-implement, engaging tasks connect skills, concepts and practices, while encouraging students to reason, problem-solve, discuss, explore multiple solution pathways, connect multiple representations, and justify their thinking. They help students monitor their own thinking and connect the mathematics they know to new situations. In other words, these tasks allow students to truly do mathematics! Written with a strengths-based lens and an attentiveness to all students, this guide includes: • Complete task-based lessons, referencing mathematics standards and practices, vocabulary, and materials • Downloadable planning tools, student resource pages, and thoughtful questions, and formative assessment prompts • Guidance on preparing, launching, facilitating, and reflecting on each task • Notes on access and equity, focusing on students’ strengths, productive struggle, and distance or alternative learning environments. With concluding guidance on adapting or creating additional rich tasks for your students, this guide will help you give all of your students the deepest, most enriching and engaging mathematics learning experience possible.

Empower students to be the change—join the teaching mathematics for social justice movement! We live in an era in which students have —through various media and their lived experiences— a more visceral experience of social, economic, and environmental injustices. However, when people think of social justice, mathematics is rarely the first thing that comes to mind. Through model lessons developed by over 30 diverse contributors, this book brings seemingly abstract high school mathematics content to life by connecting it to the issues students see and want to change in the world. Along with expert guidance from the lead authors, the lessons in this book explain how to teach mathematics for self- and community-empowerment. It walks teachers step-by-step through the process of using mathematics—across all high school content domains—as a tool to explore, understand, and respond to issues of social injustice including: environmental injustice; wealth inequality; food insecurity; and gender, LGBTQ, and racial discrimination. This book features: Content cross-referenced by mathematical concept and social issues Downloadable instructional materials for student use User-friendly and logical interior design for daily use Guidance for designing and implementing social justice lessons driven by your own students’ unique passions and challenges Timelier than ever, teaching mathematics through the lens of social justice will connect content to students’ daily lives, fortify their mathematical understanding, and expose them to issues that will make them responsive citizens and leaders in the future.

Differentiation that shifts your instruction and boosts ALL student learning! Nationally recognized math differentiation expert Nanci Smith debunks the myths surrounding differentiated instruction, revealing a practical approach to real learning differences. Theory-lite and practice-heavy, this book provides a concrete and manageable framework for helping all students know, understand, and even enjoy doing mathematics. Busy K-5 mathematics educators learn to Provide practical structures for assessing how students learn and process mathematical concepts Design, implement, manage, and formatively assess and respond to learning in a standards-aligned differentiated classroom; and Adjust current instructional materials to better meet students' needs Includes classroom videos and a companion website.

"This book is designed as a primary resource for educators engaging in mathematics task adoption, design, planning, and implementation in ways that have potential to engage, inspire, and empower K-5 children. The goal is to offer a practical and inspirational approach to culturally-relevant mathematics instruction in the form of intensive, in-the-moment guidance and practical classroom tools to meet teachers where they are and help grow their practice day by day. This book focuses on research-based and learner-centered teaching practices to help students develop deep conceptual understanding, procedural knowledge and fluency, and application in all mathematical content in grades K-5"--

"This book is a game changer! Strengths-Based Teaching and Learning in Mathematics: 5 Teaching Turnarounds for Grades K- 6 goes beyond simply providing information by sharing a pathway for changing practice. . . Focusing on our students’ strengths should be routine and can be lost in the day-to-day teaching demands. A teacher using these approaches can change the trajectory of students’ lives forever. All teachers need this resource! Connie S. Schrock Emporia State University National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics President, 2017-2019 NEW COVID RESOURCES ADDED: A Parent’s Toolkit to Strengths-Based Learning in Math is now available on the book’s companion website to support families engaged in math learning at home. This toolkit provides a variety of home-based activities and games for families to engage in together. Your game plan for unlocking mathematics by focusing on students’ strengths. We often evaluate student thinking and their work from a deficit point of view, particularly in mathematics, where many teachers have been taught that their role is to diagnose and eradicate students’ misconceptions. But what if instead of focusing on what students don’t know or haven’t mastered, we identify their mathematical strengths and build next instructional steps on students’ points of power? Beth McCord Kobett and Karen S. Karp answer this question and others by highlighting five key teaching turnarounds for improving students’ mathematics learning: identify teaching strengths, discover and leverage students’ strengths, design instruction from a strengths-based perspective, help students identify their points of power, and promote strengths in the school community and at home. Each chapter provides opportunities to stop and consider current practice, reflect, and transfer practice while also sharing · Downloadable resources, activities, and tools · Examples of student work within Grades K–6 · Real teachers’ notes and reflections for discussion It’s time to turn around our approach to mathematics instruction, end deficit thinking, and nurture each student’s mathematical strengths by emphasizing what makes them each unique and powerful.

Using strengths-based approaches to support development in mathematics It’s time to re-imagine what’s possible and celebrate the brilliance multilingual learners bring to today’s classrooms. Innovative teaching strategies can position these learners as leaders in mathematics. Yet, as the number of multilingual learners in North American schools grows, many teachers have not had opportunities to gain the competencies required to teach these learners effectively, especially in disciplines such as mathematics. Multilingual learners—historically called English Language Learners—are expected to interpret the meaning of problems, analyze, make conjectures, evaluate their progress, and discuss and understand their own approaches and the approaches of their peers in mathematics classrooms. Thus, language plays a vital role in mathematics learning, and demonstrating these competencies in a second (or third) language is a challenging endeavor. Based on best practices and the authors’ years of research, this guide offers practical approaches that equip grades K-8 teachers to draw on the strengths of multilingual learners, partner with their families, and position these learners for success. Readers will find: • A focus on multilingual students as leaders • A strength-based approach that draws on students’ life experiences and cultural backgrounds • An emphasis on maintaining high expectations for learners’ capacity for mastering rigorous content • Strategies for representing concepts in different formats • Stop and Think questions throughout and reflection questions at the end of each chapter • Try It! Implementation activities, student work examples, and classroom transcripts With case studies and activities that provide a solid foundation for teachers’ growth and exploration, this groundbreaking book will help teachers and teacher educators engage in meaningful, humanized mathematics instruction.