In this final episode of our three-part series on upleveling missing part activities, I share ways to transform two popular math games: Salute and Number Sandwiches. Learn how to modify these traditional games to help your students build a deeper understanding of number relationships through missing part problems. These upleveled versions create opportunities for students to work with equivalent expressions while maintaining the fun and engagement of game-based learning. Perfect for elementary math teachers looking to enhance their daily math lessons with games that challenge students to think more deeply about mathematical relationships.
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Episode 196 - Repackaging Style Word Problems: Transforming Missing Part Word Problems
In this second installment of our three-part series on Missing Part Activities, we explore 'repackaging tasks' - a powerful approach to traditional missing part word problems. While educators are familiar with finding unknown parts in word problems like “Christina has $12, she spends some now she has $7. How much did she spend?”, repackaging tasks push mathematical thinking further by having students redistribute quantities across equivalent expressions. Through practical examples in both multiplication and addition contexts, I demonstrate how these problems help students develop a deeper understanding of equality, number properties, and flexible thinking strategies. Learn how incorporating these enhanced word problems alongside your regular curriculum builds stronger mathematical minds. Part 1 is Episode 195 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZZKctj2pns
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Episode 195 - Upleveling Missing Part Activities to Build Deeper Mathematical Thinking
In this episode, we explore how to elevate your 'Missing Part' math activities beyond the basic type like 5 + __ = 12' into more problems that help students develop a deeper understanding of mathematical equality and build foundational number properties. Get a quick way to implement these enhanced activities in your classroom. Perfect for elementary educators looking to strengthen their students' mathematical thinking without explicitly teaching formal properties. This is the first in a three-part series on upleveling Missing Part activities for more meaningful math instruction.
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Episode 194 - The Truth About Mental Math - It's Not Just In Your Head
In this episode, we explore the common misconception about mental math in mathematics education. Featuring insights from Pam Harris' newly published book 'Developing Mathematical Reasoning: Avoiding the Trap of Algorithms,' we discuss why mental math isn't about doing calculations without paper—it's about developing quality thinking strategies.
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Episode 193 - Beyond the Template - Making the Lesh Translation Model Meaningful
In this episode, I follow up on last week's introduction to the Lesh Translation Model with an important caution. While I previously shared a template for The Translation Task, today I explore concerns raised by John Mason in the 1987 book "Problems of Representation in the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics." Mason warns that frameworks like the Lesh Model can become "mechanical schemes for generating yet more useless student activity" when implemented without proper attention. I offer two specific ways to prevent this template from becoming routine and mindless. This episode emphasizes the importance of thoughtful implementation over mechanical application of educational frameworks. For more information and to download the Translation Task Template, visit BuildMathMinds.com/193.
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.
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