The Build Math Minds Podcast
The Build Math Minds podcast is for my fellow Recovering Traditionalists out there. If you don’t know whether or not you are a Recovering Traditionalist, here’s how I define us. We are math educators who used to teach math the traditional way. Flip lesson by lesson in the textbook, directly teaching step-by-step how to solve math problems. But now, we are working to change that to a style of teaching math that is fun and meets our students where they are at, not just teaching what comes next in the textbook. We want to encourage our students to be thinkers, problem solvers, and lovers of mathematics..we are wanting to build our students math minds and not just create calculators. If that is you, then this podcast is for you.
- Update frequency
- every 6 days
- Average duration
- 10 minutes
- Episodes
- 100
- Years Active
- 2021 - 2025
Episode 182 - Visual Patterns: The Secret Weapon for Teaching The Math Practices
Discover how Visual Patterns can transform mathematical thinking in your elementary classroom! Listen in as we explore Fawn Nguyen's powerful activity that engages students in all 8 Standards of Math…
Episode 181 - Exploring Patterns Through Number Routines
The predictability of mathematics is one of the things I love about math. There are some great activities you can do in your classroom with your students to help them see & USE that predictability. …
Episode 180 - Leaping Numbers: a great math activity for exploring patterns
Want a fun, engaging, and mathematically powerful activity to help keep your students engaged in math until the holiday break? In this episode I’m sharing a new activity by one of my favorite creato…
Episode 179 - A Math Hack That Isn’t a Hack
Math tricks or hacks are everywhere, but which ones should you actually use with your students? I came across one this week on social media and thought I’d use it as an example to give you some idea…
Episode 178 - Students who struggle with Less Than problems
This week’s episode comes from a question that was sent in about helping students who struggle with math problems that are written differently than kids typically see them. These types of “less than…
Episode 177 - Math Misconceptions
Math Misconceptions might just look like mistakes that your students are making, but they are usually slightly different. Mistakes happen when we don’t remember, or remember incorrectly, whereas Mis…
Episode 176 - Avoiding the Trap of Algorithms
In this episode I’m introducing you to a not-yet-released book about the traps of math algorithms, but it’s actually so much more than that. It’s about women supporting women and lifting someone up …
Episode 175 - Always Building Relationships - Rounding Numbers Series
Rounding numbers should be way more than just a procedure where we ask students to look to see if the number behind is a 5 or higher. Helping elementary students round should be based upon their num…
Episode 174 - Helping Students Understand Magnitude of Numbers - Rounding Numbers Series
Rounding numbers should be way more than just a procedure where we ask students to look to see if the number behind is a 5 or higher. Helping elementary students round should be based upon their num…
Episode 173 - Using Number Lines to Round Numbers - Rounding Numbers Series
Rounding numbers should be way more than just a procedure where we ask students to look to see if the number behind is a 5 or higher. Helping elementary students round should be based upon their num…
Episode 172 - Is Emotional Teaching a Thing???
I think we’ve all heard and know about Emotional Eating, but have you ever felt like you’ve done Emotional TEACHING? Not sure it’s a thing, but it kind of feels like it should be. Listen in to my ra…
Episode 170 - The Importance of Play
My kids and I play a lot. Sports, card games, board games, but they all have a preset goal…to win. According to a book I’m reading, true play does NOT have a preset goal. So it got me wondering ho…
Episode 169 - Math Fluency Through Flexibility
If you’ve struggled with how to help your elementary students build their math fluency, there is one thing I encourage you to do: Help your students build their flexibility with numbers.
Textbooks tr…
Episode 168 - Use Math Manipulatives - No Matter The Age
When I first started teaching I don’t think I ONCE used a math manipulative with my students. It was all about learning and memorizing procedures and I didn’t know they needed to actually understand…
Episode 167 - Mental Math does NOT mean doing it in your head
Growing up I thought doing Mental Math meant doing the algorithm in my head. Times have changed and now many educators have kids solve math in different ways but during Mental Math it’s still only h…
Episode 166 - A Child’s Progression When Grouping to Count Items
If you’ve ever watched a child during a counting collection and thought “Ugh! Why are you grouping the items like that?!?” Well, there’s probably a reason.
There is a progression kids go through wh…
Episode 165 - Geometry in PreK-2 is more than just knowing names of shapes
It is commonly thought that Geometry in the early grades is just about getting kids to name and identify shapes. There are actually 4 big ideas talked about in the Navigating Through Geometry book. …
Episode 164 - The Power of Using Inverse Operations to Subtract & Divide
There are 4 main strategies children tend to use to solve addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems. These math strategies are not tricks. Their foundations are built on number r…
Episode 163 - Helping Your Students to Be a Successful Student
There are lots of Problems of Teaching when you are helping young kids learn mathematics. One of the hardest ones is helping your students to be successful learners, constantly trying to manage a la…