Teaching New Math

Use these easy to implement math routines as morning work, math warm-ups, or math centers to encourage creative problem solving, flexible thinking, and number sense.

Encourage creative thinking and foster students' number sense by spending just a few minutes at the beginning of class - or during math centers - to create equations of the day. Use the date, the day of the month, or the number of days you've been in school and ask students to create equations with this number as the answer. This routine is accessible to every student with a low floor and high ceiling. Students can use basic addition or subtraction facts, create multiplication or division equati

Encourage creative thinking and problem solving skills with this easy to implement math routine, which asks students to find a way to input an expression into a calculator with a broken key. This activity could be used at the beginning of class as a warm-up, morning work as students arrive, to initiate math discourse, or as a math center. This routine is accessible to every student with a low floor and high ceiling. This simple routine can help students look at numbers and equations creatively a

Encourage flexible thinking with this easy to implement math routine, which asks students to find various combinations of coins to reach given totals. This activity could be used at the beginning of class as a warm-up, morning work, or as a math center. This routine is accessible to every student with a low floor and high ceiling, as there are many possibilities for “correct” answers, encouraging students to share their solutions and ideas with each other. This simple routine can help students l

Foster students' multiplicative and flexible thinking with this easy to implement math routine, which asks students to solve for sums, products, and parts. This activity could be used at the beginning of class as a warm-up, morning work as students arrive, to initiate math discourse, or as a math center. This simple routine can help students look at numbers and equations creatively, find patterns, and help with mental math and overall number sense. Made with homeschool families in mind, these

Encourage collaboration and algebraic thinking with this easy to implement math routine that can be used as morning work, a math warm up activity, or as a math center for students. Students use algebraic thinking and knowledge of basic facts to solve these puzzles. This simple routine can help students look at numbers and equations creatively, find and use patterns, analyze the reasonableness of their ideas, and help with mental math and overall number sense. Made with homeschool families in min

This sorting activity is the perfect opportunity to challenge students' "key words" thinking of word problems. 14 word problems are included, many with the same key words or questions, requiring students to think critically and truly analyze the information given and question being asked for each problem. This product is ready to go as soon as you download it. Students will need scissors to cut apart the word problems to sort. You may want them to glue them into categories of "add" and "multiply