Below is a letter to parents, summarizing  our school’s philosophy around summer homework and math support. It ends with a set of links to dozens of resources parents can use to help their child continue to build number sense, problem-solving skills and a love of learning. Announcement: The Pi Project’s annual Singapore Math Workshop will

Notes on Math Fluency – Part One  How should children acquire math fluency? There is a rising volume of debate on thistopic, world-wide, and a number of conflicting points of view. What is our historical response to controversy? … We ask * What do the experts say? *What actually works?      * What are the needs

Inequality is a Waste We Cannot Afford We are all aware that minorities are underrepresented in STEM fields in the US — they earn only 12.5% of all such degrees, although they make up nearly 40% of the population. (link here)  Women make up less than a quarter of those working in STEM occupations, and

We Need to Stop Giving Timed Tests in Math – What Shall We Do Instead? We highly recommend this ASCD audio interview with Jennifer Bay-Williams, one of the authors of “Math Fact Fluency: 60+ Games and Assessment Tools to Support Learning and Retention”.  (If the book is too pricey, here‘s a companion website with some

We Need to Stop Giving Timed Tests in Math – What Does the Research Say? We are often criticized for opposing timed tests. “How will children learn their facts?” people ask, and “When I was a kid, we had to memorize our times tables, and it worked for us.” In part 3 of this blog

We were inspired by this article from Edutopia;  “When Teachers Overcome Math Anxiety, Students Benefit”, by Shelby Strong. Here’s a quote that struck home: “Methods of math instruction that focus on conceptual understanding may take longer than what we’re used to, but the positive results are well worth the time. The mysteries of fractions, integers,

The Beauty of Base Ten Blocks I (Kathleen) was working with a 4th grader years ago. She was struggling in math class, and came in before school twice a week to do 20 minutes of math with me. (Okay, her Dad had to bribe her with a donut…)  One morning I put 2 rainbow cubes

……… … Silence … 27 faces looking at us.  Expectantly. Politely. Silently.   The two of us (Kathleen and Corrinne)  have visited dozens of classrooms over the last few years, on a mission to help Kg-6th grade teachers in their quest to improve math education in the US. The first time we failed was in